Battle against gun violence led to death

Kenneth Mark was ‘executed’ for breaking code of silence, court told

TORONTO / In a very real way, Kenneth Mark was exactly the kind of young man police and other players in the Canadian justice system dream of and all too rarely encounter.

Mark did the right thing, broke the code of silence which governs so much of urban life and came forward, first to Toronto police and then to the courts — twice — to testify about gun violence.

And, prosecutors now allege at the trial of his alleged killer, he paid for that principled stand with his life.

This is the unsettling scenario described Wednesday by prosecutor Mary Humphrey in her opening address to Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian Nordheimer and a jury, where Lamar Skeete is charged with first-degree murder in Mark’s Dec. 29, 2009, death.

Skeete is pleading not guilty, as he proclaimed in a loud voice when he was formally arraigned.

At six-foot-four and 300 pounds, Mark was an enormous man known as a gentle giant to his family and friends — a lifelong non-smoker and drinker, a steadfast employee and a man of few words.

On the cold, clear December night that was his last, he had just bought his dinner at his favourite neighbourhood wings joint and was walking to work, headphones on, when, Humphrey said, “a young black man came up behind him and shot him in the back of the head. He died almost instantly.” He was all of 30. “Why was Kenneth Mark killed?” Humphrey asked, then answered her own question: “He was executed” because he had given evidence against Skeete and his brother in an attempted murder case against them.

Fifteen days after those charges against Skeete were withdrawn (the brother was later acquitted), Mark was gunned down.

The two had served 13 months in custody awaiting trial.

Mark’s awakening happened like this.

Sometime in the fall of 2008, some of the neighbourhood kids in the west-end Toronto housing complex where Mark had lived much of his life told him that Skeete and his brother had brought a gun into the project and were showing it around to the children.

Among those children, Humphrey said, were some of Mark’s own nieces and nephews. Mark was “very upset,” and decided that the next time he saw one or another of the brothers, he’d confront him.

It was Skeete’s brother he ran into first, and sure enough, Mark lifted him up off his bicycle by his collar, told him he knew about the guns, and told him not to come back to the complex. The fellow ran away, leaving his bike behind; it was later damaged by others.

This is known as the “draping up” incident.

Days after, Mark was chatting with a friend in the complex when he heard footsteps behind him, turned, and saw Skeete’s brother — Skeete allegedly behind him — lift his arms and fire at him.

Fifty-seven buckshot pellets were embedded in Mark’s back, neck and the side of his face, though he was released from hospital the next day.

Though at first he told police he didn’t know who shot him — he feared retaliation, he would say later — there was another shooting in the housing complex the next month, and in November 2008, concerned officers from the local station had a community meeting to discuss the gun violence.

Mark went to that meeting, and after it, he approached a detective and told him he had information.

The next day, Humphrey said, Mark came to the station and gave a sworn statement on videotape in which he implicated both Skeete and his brother: The two were masked when he was shot, he said in the statement, but he’d known them for years and recognized them.

A few days after Mark gave his statement, on Nov. 10, 2008, Skeete and his brother were arrested for attempted murder and also charged with gun offences.

Given the seriousness of the alleged offence, they were held in custody.

On April 6 the next year, a preliminary hearing was held for the brothers. Mark came and testified. Again, he implicated both of them, and though he admitted in crossexamination that it was possible Skeete wasn’t involved, he said he still believed he’d been standing behind his brother.

The two were committed for trial, and when it began on Dec. 14, 2009, prosecutors withdrew charges against Skeete — there was no reasonable prospect of conviction — and he was released from custody.

Despite that, Mark testified again, again implicated the two, but after a brief trial, on Dec. 17 the judge acquitted Skeete’s brother.

It was 15 days after Skeete’s release, 12 days after his brother was freed, that Mark was gunned down.

As Humphrey told the jurors, she isn’t asking them to decide whether or not the brothers were involved in the Sept. 2, 2008, shooting of Mark.

“What is important,” she said, “is the fact that Kenneth Mark made the statements to the police,” that he was “co-operating” with them, and that Skeete had plenty of reason to be angry with him whatever the truth of the Sept. 2 shooting.

After the brothers were released from custody, Humphrey said, Mark told his brother Ian he was concerned for his safety, and that he was going to keep a low pro file.

Mark had $379.92 in his wallet at the time of his death, and his cellphone. He wasn’t robbed. His bag of food — his last supper — was found beside his big body.