Boy shot by police ‘deserved second chance,’ family says
Mother describes the final days of Ozama Shaw, the 15-year-old the SIU would not identify
The15-year-old boy who died after he was shot by Peel police in late July was an outgoing Mississauga high school student who recently came to Canada from Jamaica to start a new life. Ozama Shaw — among the youngest people killed by police in Ontario — died at the Hospital for Sick Children on Saturday, after undergoing 11 surgeries and procedures in 30 days to treat a gunshot wound to his abdomen. Crowded around his hospital bed when he died were his mother, stepfather and17-year-old brother.
“They allowed me to go on the bed with him, so I held him,” Kadene, his mother, said in an interview in her Mississauga home this week, tears running down her face. “I still refused to believe, because I didn’t want to let go of my baby. It was the hardest thing to do.”
Shaw’s name and the details of his final days are available only because the family confirmed his identity to the Star.
His death is under investigation by Ontario’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which said earlier this week that it would not release the name of the young male. Jason Gennaro, a spokesperson for the SIU, told the Star in an email that the watchdog did not have family consent to release the name of the youth, which the family confirmed to the Star.
Gennaro also said the SIU has a separate policy about naming youth, but did not provide the details by press time Thursday.
Critics of the SIU naming policy argue the identities of the deceased in police shootings are critical to understanding and preventing such deaths.
Shaw was shot in the early hours of July 27 in Mississauga’s Credit Valley Town Plaza, where Peel police had been called for a gas-station robbery. According to police, the teen had been part of a trio trying to rob the station. The SIU said two of the men fled in a car, while the third stayed behind, attempted to rob another business and tried to gain entry into three occupied vehicles.
For Shaw’s family, the events of July 27 are difficult to reconcile with the outgoing student who would have been starting Grade 10, a teen who played offensive lineman on his football team and riddled family and strangers with questions. “He had a very curious mind. He just wanted to know things,” Kadene said.
In their Mississauga home, Shaw smiles warmly in a large framed photo on the family’s dining room table, donning a cap and gown at his 2016 graduation from Tomken Road Middle School. A sympathy card from neighbours in the family’s tight-knit condo building is propped up next to it. Shaw’s prized BMX bike leans against the wall outside.
Shaw’s older brother is upstairs, doing well considering the circumstances, Kadene said.
She pulls out her phone and begins swiping through photos of Shaw, first as a boy in his native Jamaica, then as a young man in Canada. She stops at apicture of him sitting in the window seat of a plane on Sept. 14, 2015 — his first flight, on his way to Canada after obtaining permanent residency status. “That was a very exciting day for us,” Kadene said.
Shaw’s family says he was doing well in his new home — he enjoyed his teachers and loved Canada, snow and all. But more recently, they say he had fallen into the wrong crowd and had friends Kadene didn’t approve of. He was a good kid, they said, but he had started acting out, coming home well after curfew or disappearing for days at a time.
They believe that at the time of the shooting, Shaw may have been on the party drug “molly,” also known as MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy.
David and Kadene also believe Shaw was carrying a toy or BB gun.
In the days before the shooting, Shaw had barely been home. Kadene said she called Peel police to report him missing six days before the shooting. She said an officer came by the house a couple of days later and took a statement, but nothing came of it.
David and Kadene also claim they asked the Children’s Aid Society if Shaw could be placed in temporary care, so he would be looked after when he refused to come home. “I begged for help,” Kadene said.
Sgt. Josh Colley, spokesperson for Peel Regional Police, said in an email Thursday that because the SIU is involved, he had “minimal knowledge of the incident.”
Two days before the shooting, Kadene said Shaw came home briefly for a shower. She said she tried to find out where he had been and what was happening, but he refused to answer and left.
While watching the news early on July 27, she saw that a teen had been shot by police in Mississauga and instantly knew it was her son — “I could just feel it,” she said.
The SIU contacted her on her cellphone as she was driving to the police station with Shaw’s identification, which he never carried. Watchdog investigators then took her to Sick Kids, where she kept vigil until her son’s death. Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca.