A 12-year-old killed by a stray bullet. When will this war end?

CO-FOUNDER OF ANTI-VIOLENCE ORGANIZATION (STORY, A12) “He has to be the last one. He has to be the last child that dies for no reason.” MARCELL WILSON

A12-year-boy lost his fight to live on Remembrance Day. Dante was his name. A day when we honour our war dead. But this is a different war. It’s urban mouse-holing, its front lines stretched across blood-splattered Toronto neighbourhoods.

A city of nearly three million can’t lose its fight against rampaging gun violence and ravaging gang warfare.

Because this is not who we are. Although this is what we’re in danger of becoming.

Incrementally, war creep, revealed more in the escalating number of gunfire incidents than the tally of dead victims.

Some of whom, like the child police wwill not formally identify,w were in- nocent bystanders. This youngster was simply on the way home with his mother from a shopping trip, in broad daylight, in a notably crapshoot part of town, when he was struck by a bullet intended for somebody else.

That’s a profound tragedy, but it’s not an accident.

Bullets discharged with abandon, in public, is deliberately risky business. Young men, with handguns tucked into their waistband, ready to draw and fire, have already made the choice. It’s not inadvertent. It’s just reckless. And oblivious to anguish. “They had a plan to murder someone that day,” homicide Det. Sgt. Keri Fernandes told reporters at 31 Division on Thursday afternoon, almost exactly 24

hours after the boy had succcumbed to his catastrophic injury at the Hospital for Sick Children.

On another day, we will speak about the societal factors that bring individuals, some scarcely more than children themselves, to a point of such blankfaced disregard for human life. WWe will hear from community activists, who blame poverty and inequity and cultural pathways to nihilism and littlebig-man strut, the power that devolves from the barrel of a gun.

We will doubtless hear, as wwell, from the law-and-order bellowers, who place fault on street checks banned — they aren’t — and the disbanding of TTAVIS, the Toronto Anti-Vio- lence Intervention Strategy, a program that aggressively patrolled targeted neighborhoods looking for bad guys.

We have already heard indignation of the accused cartwwheeling through the justice s system, charged and bailed out, prohibited from possessing firearms as a condition of surety, only to commit more ggun crimes, which is madden- ing and demoralizing to cops.

“I am extremely frustrated,” said Supt. Ron Taverner, who has more than half a century on the job with the Toronto Police Service. “The fact of people being on parole and being wanted for various tthings, to me it’s outrageous t that these people weren’t already in custody and behind bars.”

But no, we won’t talk about all of that today, because there’s still a murder to be solved and a third suspect in the weeds. AAnd I don’t want to hear from either the defund-police or anti- hug-a-thug contingents primed to exploit this tragedy.

What I want to hear is that those who know the who and wwhy of it have shared that information with police.

Which is, too often, a futile ask.

Toronto isn’t Chicago, where dozens of children have been kkilled, among the 676 homi- cides thus far in 2020, often in crossfire, in block-by-block gang violence: 38 juveniles, five under the age of 10. In one JJune week, a one-year-old, a three-year-old, t a 10-year-old, a 113-year old. Such that the rally- ing cry has been “Kids Lives Matter,” and a community activist has advocated for 4,000 bulletproof backpacks to be distributed to school children.

We’re not anywhere near such gunfire devastation and perdition. We can count the dead children on the fingers of one hand. But only by the grace of God, have other children, wwounded by gunfire or within inches of gunfire, been spared.

The six-year-old boy narrowly missed by a bullet amidst an afternoon shootout in May on Blue Jays Way, wherein upaand-coming rapper Houdini, g given name Dimarjio Antonio Jenkins, was killed in a targeted ambush near Jane Street and Lawrence Avenue on Oct. 1. The newborn, not a month old, whose parents were taking him for a routine visit to the doctor when a car pulled up alongside the couple, its occupants opening fire. The 27year- old father was killed.

You think it can’t get any worse. But it does. And each time we grow a little more numb to the carnage.

We remember the baby born prematurely to a mother shot in the back of a vehicle. Kyrie lived for only three weeks.

Shyanne Charles, just 14, wwhen she was killed in the crossfire of an intra-gang shootout at a 2016 Danzig Street neighbourhood barbecue. A toddler was wounded.

Jane Creba, 15, killed in the crossfire a gang shooting on Boxing Day, 2005, across the street from the Eaton Centre.

Thirteen-year-old Connor Stephenson, shot in the head — he would survive, with lasting effects — when Christopher Husbands fired 14 rounds in the crowded food court at the Eaton Centre, killing two and wounding five.

Eleven-year-old Ephraim Brown, dead from a shot in the throat, as he attended a birthday party at a housing complex on Sheppard Avenue West, near Jane, in 2007. Gunfight between rival gangs.

Three-year-old Brianna Davy, struck in the head by a stray bullet — she was killed instantly — as she sat in her car seat in a parking lot in the Jane- Finch area in 1999.

Fifteen-year-old Jordan Manners, fatally shot dead in the chest in the hallway of C.W. Jeffreys high school, where he was a Grade 9 student.

Lecent Amos-Ross, 14, shot dead in a Rexdale house in 2015.

Jaydin Simpson, 17, freshly ggraduated from high school, shot dead 50 metres from his Danzig Street front door in July, 2019.

Ruma Amar, 18, shot dead outside a Toronto bowling alley in 2018.

Two young sisters, aged five and nine, shot in the spray of bullets at a Scarborough playground two years ago as other yyoungsters fled in terror. The younger y girl wrote in an im- pact statement read in court last month: “I was outside playing and then I heard gunshots … the next thing I know the front of my shirt was red.”

Since 2014, more than 200 youth ages 13 to 29 have been kkilled in Toronto, excluding suspected or confirmed domestic homicide, according to a Toronto Star database. Guns were involved in 166 of those murders.

So far this year, 426 shooting aand firearm discharge in- cidents, the same number as this time last year. A guns pandemic. “We can give the family very little from this,” Fernandes said aat the press conference. “They’ve lost a son. The one thing they’ve asked for is privacy and I’m going to respect that as much as possible.”

Murder is not a private matter, however. That’s the truth of it.

But, as of this writing, without a name or a face to put to the victim, the boy is every-child. He can be your son or grandson or nephew or neighbour; your child’s playmate, classmate.

While police won’t definitively say so, the shooting, which wwounded three others, all treated at hospital and released, has all the hallmarks of a gang shootout.

“I can say that we believe it’s ggang-related, but I can’t con- f firm that, investigatively, at this point,” Fernandes said.

As the Star’s Betsy Powell reported this week, the shooting appears connected to longstanding warfare between gangs based in the Driftwood aarea north of Finch and others f from the downtown Regent Park neighbourhood.

It’s believed the shooters wwere waiting in the parking lot aat Strong Court for their in- tended victim. They allegedly spotted the car they were seeking and began blasting aaway. “Five people were in the car,” acting police chief James RRamer said on Saturday. “Three were struck.” One of them was a 17-year-old boy.

The car with the gunmen then sped away, its movements captured by CCTV cameras.

“Those cameras helped us to identify the path the suspects took both before and after the mmurder took place,” Fernandes said, “as well as help us identify specific things about the vehicle that they used.”

In admirably quick investigative work, two males identified by the guns and gangs unit were arrested in a takedown on Monday as they left a Canadian Tire store at Bay and Dundas around 5 p.m. Police said the men, both armed when they wwere arrested, may also have been involved in a shooting that took place on Nov. 4 at 390 Driftwood Ave., at about 11 p.m., and, just 14 hours before the Saturday shooting, allegedly firing multiple rounds into a hotel room in Brantford, injuring a purported leader of a Driftwood-area gang. “We still are investigating potential links between those shootings and the homicide,” said Fernandes.

Some have questioned the wwisdom of a muscular arrestw on a crowded downtownkstreet. “I don’t know if any part of this investigation and arrest was standard ,” ret or tedw Fern an des when w What queried I do w“know about is that that the event. officers saw the opportunity to take thosea suspects safely out with minimal risk and they decided to at that point.”

Rashawn Chambers, 24, of TToronto, and Jahwayne Smart, 25, were originally charged wwith attempted murder and aggravated assault. Those ccharges were upgraded to f first-degree murder on Thurs- day.

Smart was on a parole violation, Fernandes confirmed.

“The investigation has shown us that the two accused had planned to carry out murder at this time.

The fact that the 12-year-old vvictim was not the intended target is not a piece of that,” FFernandes continued. “He was hit as these men were attempting to carry out their plan to murder someone.

“They had a plan to murder someone that day. That’s as mmuch as I can speak to about wwhat their plan involved at that point.”

But there’s a third suspect at large, a Black male, who “helped transport them to the scene” and “is involved in the planning of this murder,” who wwill also be charged with first- degree murder when he’s caught. And he will be caught.

This city has been a-roil with ggang violence and crude street justice in the past year, much of it apparently coalescing aaround dissing feuds and men- acing posted videos.

The crucible of the violence has been beleaguered JaneFinch.

“It goes without saying what an absolute tragedy this whole occurrence is and what it’s done to the community, that’s already fragile at best,” said Taverner.

“It’s almost unspeakable, the nnumber of gun crimes that’s taking place in this community. There’s people who know who aare carrying guns and where t they are. Please reach out to us. Do it anonymously!”

Taverner added: “The gun violence in this community is higher than anywhere else in the city. It’s very disturbing wwhen we have good, good people that live in these areas aand are being just terrorized by t the gun violence that’s taking place.”

Domestic terrorism. Neighborhood terrorism. Street terrorism.