Victims’ mothers ‘re-traumatized’ by police shooting

TORONTO — A group of mothers who lost their sons in police shootings added their voices Tuesday to a growing chorus calling for the death of an 18-year-old to change how police respond to people in crisis.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the city’s police headquarters demanding justice for Sammy Yatim, who died last month after being shot and Tasered by police on an empty streetcar.

Nine shots can be heard on cellphone videos that captured the incident, following shouts for Yatim to drop a knife. The final six shots appear to come after he had already fallen to the floor of the streetcar.

Yatim’s mother and sister along with the families of other police shooting victims in Ontario attended the protest, which coincided with a monthly public meeting of Toronto’s police services board.

“Justice for Sammy, justice for all,” chanted protesters, who were blocked from the police headquarters’ entrance by officers on bikes as they called for the officer who shot Yatim to be charged and put in jail.

Not long before the demonstrators spilled into the streets, a group of mothers who had their sons killed by police appeared together at a news conference. They said they had been “retraumatized” by Yatim’s shooting death.

“It was too close to home,” Jackie Christopher said with tears streaming down her face. Her 26-year-old son, O’Brien Christopher-Reid, was killed in 2004 after Toronto police responded to a call about a man with a knife in a park.

Christopher sat through every day of the coroner’s inquest into her son’s death and said if the recommendations that came out of it were followed, Yatim would be alive today.

“What’s the point of all of this if nothing’s going to happen?” Christopher said. “Do I sound angry? Yes, I am angry. I’m angry because another mother lost her 18-year-old son at a time when it should not have happened.”