Face covering masked a murderer
A gun in his hand and a mask on his face.
Gangbangers never sleep, not even in the midst of a global pandemic.
But while a face covering, a bandana maybe, worn in broad daylight on a downtown Toronto street might have alerted the public to something menacing, endangerment possibly afoot, the medical mask has become ubiquitous. This murderer’s mask.
In any event, there was scarcely time to react — a sixyear-old boy barely scampered out of the way — when a gunfight broke out in the Entertainment District on Tuesday afternoon.
Twenty-three shell casings collected by forensic investigators: 13 of 40 calibre, 10 of 9 mm. A whole lot of shooting going on.
Another local rapper dead, added to the roll call of hiphoppers killed in a musical genre that romanticizes violence. Up and coming performer, Dimarjio Jenkins, known as Houdini, was murdered as three “associates’’ fled down a laneway.
What does “associate” mean in this context? Posse or protectors, maybe. Two of them were packing, one with a highcapacity 30-round magazine. Both weapons recovered at the scene. A 15-year-old youth — he was part of the Jenkins group that numbered four individuals — is in hospital recovering from a shotgun wound. He was known to police. He’s been charged with firearm offences.
“They go into the alley, and, at this point, the 15-year-old male discards a handgun on the sidewalk which has jammed,” homicide Det. Andy Singh told a press conference on Thursday, where police released images from video that captured the shooting. What were you doing at 15? Some in this city have already graduated to firearms at that tender age. Younger, even. We’re no longer the oblivious metropolis shocked to the bone when teenager Jane Creba was killed in the crossfire of a brazen gunfight on Yonge Street, Boxing Day, 2005. Year of the Gun, as it became known.
Fifteen years later and it’s fair to wonder if another summer of heat is looming as street gangs seize on grudges and turf battles and drug trafficking.
Whether the Tuesday episode was linked to another bangbang the following day — adult male rushed to hospital with multiple gunshot wounds from the Main and Gerrard street areas — police can’t say, don’t know yet. So many dots that might or might not be connected, possibly emanating from a bloody rivalry involving the Driftwood Crips and their enemies.
“There are many neighbourhoods in the city that, obviously, have conflicts,” said Singh. “It would be speculation at this point, but we are aware of what the landscape looks like in terms of the different gangs out there. We are looking at that.”
This particular landscape, the hip-hop terrain where young men who’ve grown up in hardscrabble housing complexes, envying what they don’t have, pour their reality into rap lyrics, studding their videos with boastful tableaus of money wads, heavy gold chains clanging around their necks. The rap scene has claimed at least four aspiring local musicians in the past two years. Get rich and famous or die tryin’!
“If you don’t catch a headshot, consider yourself lucky,” rapped Tyronne Noseworthy, among many promising hiphoppers bred in this city. Noseworthy, 19, was killed by a gunshot to the head in February, in a downtown condo Airbnb.
Noseworthy, a.k.a. fourty4double0, was one-half, with his twin brother, of Tallup Twinz, and had collaborated with Keeshawn Brown, 18, a.k.a. Why-S Neat, shot dead a month earlier in a house in Surrey, B.C. Dots and connections. Jahquar Stewart, a.k.a. Bvlly, shot dead in an Oshawa townhouse last Christmas Eve. And then there was the Canada Day weekend murder of Jahvante Smart, a.k.a. Smoke Dawg, who’d toured with Drake.
All precociously talented. Houdini’s gifts are evident in the tracks he dropped, especially “Late Nights” and “Myself.”
The Sun’s Sam Pazzano has reported that Jenkins had ties to the violent Young Buck Killas. Their leader, Thai-Shay
“Pistol” Gordon was last year sentenced to nine years in a case where two males were kidnapped, held captive for several days, forced to perform sex acts on each other while being videotaped and to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun. All of which began with an armed standoff in the elevator of a Front Street condominium.
Jenkins hailed from YongeFinch, but, on Wednesday, he’d stepped out with his bros from an Airbnb — another unifying thread — near the intersection of King Street and Blue Jays Way. Did he know he was a target? Singh says it was a targeted shooting. An innocent 27-yearold female bystander was struck by a bullet. Singh called it a “stray bullet,” but nothing really stray about it, except she was not an intended victim. Collateral damage.
Besides the 15-year-old boy, detectives are desperate to identify and track down the other shooter in Jenkins’ party, the guy with the discarded high-capacity firearm. Singh pointed to a photo believed to be that individual, captured later that day at a nearby business. A very clear image, easily identifiable to those who know him.
“He quite clearly has no regard for human life, was discharging a high-capacity magazine in a completely public area with families around. We need the public’s help to identify this individual so we can bring him to justice.”
The assailant, too, the triggerman who started it all, is in the wind. The lone shooter who emerged from a distinctive blue Volkswagen Tiguan — police have recovered the vehicle, a rental, ditched and burned out, found in York Region late Wednesday — after apparently “lying in wait” for Jenkins and his homies to appear in his crosshairs, the SUV pulling a U-turn when the group was spotted.
That shooter is seen on the video, outstretched arm, weapon in hand, firing, before running back to the vehicle, driven by someone else, jumping in and tearing off.
“The little boy was exactly in the line of fire when it first started,” said Singh, as his mom was loading items into her car. “The family in the background were in the receiving end of the volley of shots.”
Watch as those shots skip off the ground, kicking up dust, inches from where the boy had been standing, as he skedaddled for safety in the vestibule of a boutique hotel. More shots hit the road close to his mother.
“What we believed has occurred,” Singh continued, “is that the shooter comes out of the suspect vehicle, opens gunfire, and two associates of Mr. Jenkins return gunfire with their own handguns, back at the shooter. We have an active gunfight happening on the side of Blue Jays Way.”
“(The suspect) is firing gunshots as well as proceeding southbound to the waiting vehicle at the end of the street.” Jenkins is running northbound with his associates, into the alley. He will not survive, slain on the streets of Toronto, 30th homicide of the year.
On a beautifully sunny afternoon, on one of the busiest corners of the city.
A gunman with a mask, the article that is supposed to help keep people safe from a potentially lethal pathogen.
“This is definitely an opportunistic moment for the person who is wearing the masks, who’s conducting activity where they’re actually engaged in a criminal offense,” said Singh, in cop-speak.
“This is an incident that was very violent. It had the propensity to go very bad.”
Bad enough. In a city infected by the virus of violence.
SHOOTING: Police release video of Houdini shooting Tuesday, A15