Birthday party honours murdered teen
Don Bosco shooting victim’s loved ones gather in his memory
The party kicked off where Zaid Youssef felt at home: a brightly lit, manicured pitch inside Vaughan’s Ontario Soccer Centre.
A rowdy pickup game in his honour had just ended, and teenage players traded in their sweat-soaked jerseys of the soccer-crazed birthday boy’s favourite team, FC Barcelona, for matching T-shirts adorned with a photo of his face. They joined the rest of the party in the lounge, abuzz with the chatter of more than 50 people — family members catching up, friends snapping photos, the bounce-bounce-bounce of a toddler with a soccer ball.
For a few moments, the mood was light. At the front of the room, Athir Youssef unveiled an enlarged poster of his son, then placed it behind an elaborately decorated birthday cake, as if the grinning young man in the photo were about to blow out his 18th birthday candles. One by one, guests turned their focus to the life-sized image, and the chatter gave way to silence.
Jina Samouie looked up, too, and stared for a long time at her son’s face. Then, she buried her head in her hands and wailed.
Zaid Youssef is dead, an innocent bystander killed in a schoolyard shooting one year ago Tuesday. They threw a birthday party on Saturday for him anyway.
“As long as I am living, I will celebrate his birthday,” Samouie, 39, said. “But I hope I am not around much longer because I want to be with him.”
Youssef was one of two high school students gunned down after a midday schoolyard fight near Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School turned deadly. They were the city’s youngest victims of gun violence in 2014.
Youssef, who had just turned 17, and 15-year-old Michael Menjivar were both spectators at a fight they had heard about, and “they seem to be totally innocent parties in this matter,” said lead Toronto police homicide Det. Shawn Mahoney.
The teens’ deaths shocked Toronto, shattered two families and sparked a challenging police investigation that continues today.
Although Toronto police have arrested and charged a 17-year-old boy with attempted murder, the charge does not relate to either of the teens’ deaths. Their killer has not been found.
But Toronto police revealed to the Star this week that they now know there was only one shooter that day, something that only became clear through witness accounts and forensic evidence taken from the scene.
The detectives’ working theory is that a spat between two boys — neither of them Youssef or Menjivar — quickly escalated when “outsiders” butted in.
“It started out as something very simple, involving two young men at school that just seemed to spiral out of control, where outsiders got involved and took it to an extreme level,” Mahoney said.
In the wake of the deaths, students and friends speculated the initial schoolyard fight — which witnesses said began in the Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School parking lot, then moved across the street — had been the result of a feud that began online.
Mahoney, however, said while the fight didn’t start online, social-media activity “fuelled the fire.”
As is the case with many unsolved crimes, the major obstacle for police has been obtaining witness accounts of the shooting, its aftermath or the events that led up to the violence. To make an arrest in this case, all it may take is one person to come forward, Mahoney said.
“I need an individual that will tell me exactly who that shooter is or provide that evidence,” Mahoney said. “We know there are people that were clearly a witness to what occurred during the day, outside in a field, yet they’ve made a choice not to assist the investigation by being a witness. At the end of the day, we need people to come to us, not necessarily to tell us everything, but to tell us what they know and we can put it together.”
For Samouie and Athir Youssef, the lack of resolution is only one injustice heaped upon them. (A member of Menjivar’s family declined to speak to the Star for this story, saying his death “is still so fresh.”) They want it solved, of course. But their son doesn’t come back if it is.
In the weeks after his death, friends that Youssef’s parents didn’t even know about called and sent messages. Her son had been a shy kid, Samouie said. “I didn’t always know how many friends he had who loved him. But now I see.”
Some of those friends have graduated from Grade 12, gone on to college. Inside Youssef’s room in the family’s Etobicoke apartment, time has stood still. The sheets lay on his bed as he left them.
Samouie will not dust, afraid to re- move his fingerprints. Athir Youssef said he and his wife rolled up a towel that smells like their son and every night placed it between them when they sleep.
Youssef’s close friends visit often, stopping by to sit in his room and chat with Samouie.
“Us being here for her, I know it’s not like him being here,” says Maryam Sarkisyan, a childhood friend. “But we’re trying to give her that love that he used to give us.”
As the 18th birthday candles burned, friends and family gathered around the cake, ready to watch Fawaz, Youssef’s beloved 3-year-old cousin, make the first cut. They broke out into “Happy Birthday,” complete with the “How old are you now?” verse. Then they counted up the numbers.
Athir Youssef stood near the back of the room, dabbing his eyes with a tissue and leaning against the wall. Friends wrapped their arms around each other, one teenage boy crying into another’s shoulder.
When they arrive at 18, everyone clapped. But when they stopped, sobbing can be heard. “Come on guys, it’s his birthday,” one friend piped up. “You have to be happy.”