Bullet points MARK the path
RICHARD WARNICA RETRACES THE STEPS OF A KILLER
There’s this idea that all tragedies happen in an instant. That if you blink, you’ ll miss them. Bang, they’re over, and the aftermath’s there.
But the attack on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue on Sunday night didn’t unfold in a moment. It went on and on, down a busy strip of restaurants and coffee shops and strange little boutiques.
It would take a tall man, walking quickly, almost five minutes to get from Christina’s restaurant, where the first bullets were fired, to the alleyway behind the Danforth Church, where witnesses say the shooter first encountered police.
Build in some time to pause, to aim even briefly, to hesitate for a half second here or there, and you’re talking about a trip of six minutes or more. Six minutes of precise punctures — of blows hammered into lives and windows and into a neighbourhood’s collective sense of what was possible and real.
Two days after the shooting, two realities seemed to coexist on the Danforth. There was the everyday world, where the Second Cup was just a coffee shop. But there was this other space too — a kind of breach world, battling the normal — where the Second Cup remained a capital “S” Scene.
The Danforth, from Logan west to Bowden, was full of those spaces Tuesday: breaches bubbling up beneath all the efforts to carry on. It was as if the normal life of the strip — an extension of Toronto’s main east/ west corridor — was overlaid still with Sunday’s six minutes of pain, as if a miasma of those horrible moments still hovered in the air.
From the patio at Christina’s, where a witness told CBC he saw a woman get shot, it would have taken Faisal Hussain, the gunman, about 18 seconds to round the corner to the Alexander the Great Parkette, where he strafed a crowd sitting by the fountain and on the patios of Lukumum’s Café and Alexandros gyros shop.
He killed Reese Fallon, an 18-year-old local, in the parkette. She wanted to become a nurse. She was one of two people killed. The other, whose identity was released by Toronto police Tuesday night, was Julianna Kozis, 10, of Markham.
At about 38 seconds, Hussain could have been at the crosswalk, where witnesses say he fired again. He could have crossed, fired and turned back again by 65 seconds.
That’s 65 seconds that will live forever for Fallon’s family and friends. Sixtyfive seconds that lived on Tuesday in a riot of memorials — flowers, candles and signs — surrounding the fountain in the square.
At about one minute 41 seconds Hussain could have passed the TD bank at the northwest corner of Danforth and Logan. He would have walked past the competing fruit markets, closed for the night Sunday, but open again Tuesday peddling berries and peppers side by side. He would have walked past the Flight Centre, past the Pilates sign and to the Mezes restaurant, where a waiter told the Toronto Star she saw a colleague get shot.
At about two minutes two seconds, Hussain would have reached Pappas Grill, a Greek restaurant. A witness saw him fire inside there Sunday night as well. The bullet hole was still there in the glass Tuesday morning. It looked violent and huge, though surprisingly clean — a big circle punched in a glass door, surrounded by a neat lattice work of cracks.
By 2:15, Hussain could have walked through the intersection at Arundel. A husband and wife watched him do that Sunday from their car. They described the calm way he held his gun.
The next several moments were captured by a witness on her phone. She recorded Hussain striding down the next block — he would have been about 2:50 in — lifting his weapon up and firing — Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! — into Caffe Demetre dessert shop.
Alone among the affected businesses, Demetre remained boarded-up Tuesday. Even the store’s sign was covered, with a big green tarp. “Evil act,” someone wrote on the plywood out front, “call on Jesus.”
By 3:27, Hussain could have walked by Burger Stomper, where security footage captured him at 10 p.m. on the dot.
At 3:39, he could have begun his diagonal race across the road, to the Second Cup, where bullet casings were marked out carefully on the ground Monday and where, by Tuesday, the broken glass had already been replaced. The old panes leaned against a blue pickup truck on the sidewalk in the early afternoon. The bullet holes stared out into the street.
By 3:51 Hussain could have passed the Auld Spot, where customers ran back and inside for cover.
By 4:28 he could have been at 7Numbers, an Italian food institution, where he again shot inside.
He turned after 7Numbers, down Bowden Street. By 5:28, he could have reached the nearby alley behind Danforth Church, where workers were putting up a rainbow PEACE flag Tuesday.
He could have turned back then and encountered the police back on Bowden at 5:56.
By six minutes, it could have been all over.
Shards of broken glass remained on Bowden Tuesday, evidence of the confrontation that happened there. Next to the sidewalk, beside a parked car, lay a tiny strip of bloody gauze.
There is an instinct now, in the face of great tragedy, to move on, to power through, to be #strong. It was visible all over Danforth Tuesday, in the memorials and the vows to keep living. But the broken glass matters, too, after an attack. The evidence matters, for more than just the police.
The breach world, the one created by the violent puncture of the everyday, exists, whether we want it to or not. It lasted for at least six long minutes Sunday.
It’s OK to live there for a time. It’s OK not to perform the normal. It’s even OK to feel uncomfortable as you watch the normal set back in.
THE BREACH WORLD, THE ONE CREATED BY THE VIOLENT PUNCTURE OF THE EVERYDAY, EXISTS, WHETHER WE WANT IT TO OR NOT. IT LASTED FOR AT LEAST SIX LONG MINUTES SUNDAY. — RICHARD WARNICA, ON THE AFTERMATH OF THE SHOOTING