Toronto police arrested two teenagers on Wednesday in connection to the city's first homicide of 2008 after a 14-year-old girl was stabbed to death Tuesday night.

The area where the body was found at O'Connor Drive and St. Clair Avenue East is shown with police markers.
(CBC)

A 17-year-old male and a 15-year-old female were arrested Wednesday morning and are to appear in court on charges of first-degree murder, Toronto police said.

Police said in a release that the suspects, who can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, are both from Toronto.

The victim was found just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in the area of O'Connor Drive and St. Clair Avenue East. She had been stabbed in the abdomen.

She was taken to Toronto East General Hospital where she was pronounced dead. Her name has not been released.

A report in the Toronto Star says police were initially misdirected to the wrong street by an agitated 911 caller who identified herself as a friend of the victim.

The delay cost paramedics precious time as they searched for the victim, who reports say, lay bleeding on a frozen sidewalk. She was finally discovered by an off-duty police officer.

Police arrested the male early Wednesday at an apartment not far from the scene. They did not say where the second suspect was located or whether both accused knew the victim.

This is the city's first homicide of 2008. There were 84 homicides in 2007, 15 more than in 2006.

Toronto police Chief Bill Blair told the Toronto Star in a year-end interview homicide investigators made arrests in roughly 65 per cent of cases.

That was down from last year's 69 per cent, but an improvement from 2004 and 2005 when the clearance rate hovered around 55 per cent, he said.