Northern Peninsula man rushed to help amid Toronto shooting
Jerry Pinksen’s girlfriend, Danielle Kane, one of 13 wounded
A man from Straitsview on the Northern Peninsula and his girlfriend were dining at a Toronto restaurant when their lives were changed forever.
Jerry Pinksen, 35, and Danielle Kane, 31, were in the middle of the shooting on Danforth Avenue in Toronto on Sunday evening, July 22.
They were with a friend at the 7Numbers restaurant when shots rang out.
Faisal Hussain, 29, killed two people and injured 13, including Kane. Media reports say Hussain was found dead about 500 metres from where the shooting occurred, and that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A bullet shattered Kane’s T11 vertebra, piercing her stomach and diaphragm.
As of Friday, Kane was being treated at the intensive care unit at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
She is expected to survive, and Pinksen said she is progressing each day. But it is unknown if she’ll be able to walk again.
Pinksen was unharmed in the shooting.
He spoke with The Northern Pen, from Toronto, about the experience and that evening’s horrible events.
The shooting
“We were on the patio outside, dining, and we heard the bullets. We didn’t know what it was. We thought it was a car backfiring or fireworks, or something like that — we never heard gunshots that close before,” he said.
Pinksen, an emergency room nurse, and Kane, a nursing student, rushed inside the restaurant. He estimates that maybe two or three minutes had passed.
“We didn’t know what was going on,” he said.
They encountered another restaurant patron screaming hysterically. The woman told them she had seen someone get shot on the other side of the building.
Pinksen immediately felt the need to act.
“For me, I was an emergency nurse and I just felt like I had to do something, I had to do whatever I could,” he said.
He went out through the other side of the restaurant, where he encountered the shooter.
“I saw someone in the back of my eye, I walked a few steps and then I heard a click or a bang — I’m not sure what it was,” he recalled. “I looked back and I saw him and he just pulled his arms up in the air and I just heard gunfire. I ducked down by the patio and I heard six or eight shots. Then I heard Danielle scream, and someone say she got hurt.
“I jumped back up during the whole thing and I moved back to the patio and she was in the doorway of the exit. I just pushed her inside a little bit and closed the doors as quickly as I could to help protect her.”
He remembers Kane saying she was in pain and couldn’t feel her legs.
“For me, I was an emergency nurse and I just felt like I had to do something. I had to do whatever I could.”
Jerry Pinksen
Pinksen drew on his experience as an emergency room nurse to tend to her.
He says he saw a wound on her back.
“So, I just started applying pressure and just keeping her breathing through the pain, and keeping her alert,” he said.
Minutes later, the police arrived, and then the paramedics.
Kane was taken to St. Michael’s Hospital, where she’s been in a coma ever since.
The aftermath
Pinksen said he’s dealing with grief and a sense of guilt.
“You decide to go out and help people and your partner gets shot,” he said. “I felt so responsible.”
But as he talked to more people, he said he’s come to realize that it is in Kane’s nature to try to help, too.
“I knew that Danielle is such a selfless, caring and genuine person, that’s why we fell in love,” he said. “She’s like Newfoundlanders, we are so generous, so caring. I know that Danielle has the same characteristics. Doesn’t matter what I would have said, she would have come out and she would have helped.”
Pinksen stressed that he wants people to know the kind of person Kane is.
“I want people to know that Danielle is the brave one. She’s the one who sacrificed herself and is hurting now and needs people’s support,” he said. “She’s such a selfless person and I know she would do it again.”
A Gofundme page called #Danistrong: Stand up for Dani has been organized by a friend to help with her rehabilitation. As of Friday, it had raised more than $60,000.
Pinksen says other fundraisers are planned or underway in the Toronto area and in Newfoundland, including by his family in Straitsview.
He’s appreciative of people’s generosity.
“I’m really touched by everyone’s support,” he said.
Pinksen moved with his mother from Seal Cove, on the Baie Verte Peninsula, to Straitsview, on the Great Northern Peninsula, at the age of 10. He grew up there until he was 18.
“It was always a great place to grow up. People are so supportive and come together so well,” he said. “And it’s so good to know when you’re here, so far away, that all these people are there and rooting for you. And I know if I need anything, my community is there to help out. It makes this horrendous thing just a little bit easier.”
Pinksen has been living in Toronto off and on for seven years and has been dating Kane, who recently completed her first year of nursing school, for almost two years. She is from the Toronto area.