‘When I got shot I felt sad because no child should have to pay the price for gun violence’
Young sisters describe horror of being shot in playground two years ago in statement read into court for hearing of man who put them in line of fire
Two young girls shot while having fun in a tiny Scarborough playground expressed their trauma in handwritten words and drawings submitted to a Toronto court Monday at the sentencing hearing of one of the men who put them in the line of fire.
Earlier this month, T’Quan Robertson, 25, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
Robertson — who has a baby of his own on the way — stood up and apologized for his actions, saying he loves children and “what I did was horrendous” on June 14, 2018. He and two other men drove to the Alton Towers Circle complex, near McCowan Road and Steeles Avenue, to kill Clinton McDonald. They missed him while spraying the playground filled with kids, injuring the sisters, who cannot be identified.
Crown attorney Benjamin Snow read their victim impact statements in Superior Court on Monday during a hybrid inperson and virtual proceeding.
“I was out side playing and then I heard gunshots the next I know the front of my shirt was red,” Snow said reading from a handwritten statement submitted by the girl who was five when she was shot in her stomach. Below her large-print writing is a self-portrait of herself happy, then collapsing to the ground, bleeding and throwing up, and “next blackness.”
The girl’s statement ends: “When I talk about it I feel like I’m reliving it.”
Snow also read from her older sister’s statement. She was nine when she was shot in the leg.
“I felt sad because no child should have to pay the price for gun violence,” she wrote, adding she screamed when she saw her right leg bleeding and can only remember the ambulance. Her statement included her own stick-person likeness beside a basketball net and a shining sun.
Another daughter, who wasn’t hit by bullets but was grazed, also filed a statement describing the “nightmare” of what happened, as did the girls’ parents.
“I did not know if they would survive, I thought I was going to lose my girls,” wrote Stacey King, the girls’ mother. “Everyone is angry and hurt and in pain. The way we act with (each other) has changed.”
The father — who cannot be identified because he shares his daughters’ last name — wrote his one daughter still has bullet fragments in her leg, which “makes it painful for her to run around and play. She can’t do as much as the other kids. It’s hard for me to watch.” He added they are a close family, “so it was terrifying for all of us, now we have to work together to heal and move forward.”
Shocking surveillance video captured the minutes leading up to the shooting and its aftermath when at least 10 gunshot blasts sent as many as a dozen children running for their lives.
Prosecutor Julie Battersby — who is asking that Robertson receive a 15-year penitentiary sentence — noted the shooting was not “an impulsive act,” but a planned execution, the gunmen undeterred that McDonald was in a playground filled with children.
Defence lawyer John Struthers, who is asking for a 10-year prison sentence, filed several letters of support on behalf of his client, whom he said has exhibited “very real and genuine remorse,” as demonstrated by his early guilty plea. (Robertson was also wanted by police for two years until his arrest this past July.)
Struthers asked Superior Court Justice John McMahon to approach his sentencing with “hope and kindness and moderation,” but agreed with the prosecution the crime itself was “outrageous.”
McMahon said he would sentence Robertson on Oct. 29.