To many, boy’s shooting death is not a surprise
Toronto police say violence in Jane-Finch area is higher than anywhere else in city
To community members and those working to curb gun violence, the senseless fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy walking home with his mother is many wrenching things: “the worst news possible,” “a tragedy,” “everything that is wrong with our city.” What it’s not is a surprise. Being on the ground in communities traumatized by gun violence — including in Jane and Finch hours after Saturday’s quadruple shooting that ultimately took the life of the young boy — Marcell Wilson could see the escalation in violence and knew tragedy was coming.
Shootings have become so commonplace in some Toronto neighbourhoods it’s becoming accepted — “a lot of people have given up,” said Wilson, a former gang member and co-founder of antiviolence and anti-gang organization One By One movement. In an interview shortly after learning the boy had died in hospital — four days after being struck by a stray bullet during an apparently gang-related shooting — Wilson was audibly upset over the lack of outrage across the city.
The boy’s death is “everything that is wrong with our city, our streets, our community.”
“Where’s the protest for this young man? Where is that far-reaching outcry that this city should have? Where is the outcry?” Wilson asked. “We need this city. So does this boy, so does this family.”
At a news conference Thursday, Toronto police Supt. Ron Taverner, the commander of the area’s 31 Division, said “disturbing” gun violence in the community was “terrorizing” good people.
“The gun violence in this community is higher than anywhere else in the city.”
Toronto police homicide investigators have added first-degree murder to a long list of charges faced by Rashawn Chambers, 24, and Jahwayne Smart, 25, the alleged gunmen who were arrested Monday while exiting a downtown Canadian Tire, police seizing two loaded firearms. Smart was on parole at the time of his arrest, Taverner said.
Police said they were not releasing the name of the boy, citing a request for privacy by his grieving family. The Star has confirmed his first name was Dante.
According to Toronto police statistics, more than 200 people have been killed or injured in more than 400 confirmed shootings this year — the same number of shootings as last year, but well above earlier year-to-date totals in data that goes back to 2004.
This year alone, five youth under the age of 20 have been killed. One was 16 years old, while two were 15 years old.
Butterfly GoPaul, a resident and member of the Jane and Finch Action Against Poverty group, called the boy’s death “the worst news possible.”
“It’s sudden and tragic and the whole the community it devastated,” she said. “This isn’t an isolated experience. This does bring up many losses of young people, young boys going back a decade or more.”
When tragedies like this happen, it puts a spotlight on the issues in the community and the desperate need to address the root causes of gun violence, she said — the very issues the community has been trying to flag to political leaders for “decades.” That includes urgent investments in housing, education, transit and health — “these are the things we need to put dollars into,” she said,
“This is a symptom of poverty, racism and historic neglect in this neighbourhood,” she said.
Louis March, founder of Toronto’s Zero Gun Violence Movement, said despite the upward trend of gun violence, “we’ve never really put together a comprehensive strategic action plan.”
“Our concern is that the longer we take to deal with this issue, the more difficult and complicated it becomes.
“Our city’s mayor and our political leaders are too busy looking for magic answers and silver bullets. But we’re looking for political leadership.”
“We’ve seen time and time again, year after year, shootings, increasing deaths,” said lawyer and community advocate Knia Singh.
When deaths like the boy’s happen, there are loud demands for more policing, stiffer penalties, and changes to the criminal justice system.
“But nobody demands that the people that are perpetrating or involved in this activity, be ... supported to change their minds, change their paths. All we keep doing is addressing the issue after the fact,” Singh said.
Mayor John Tory, who has met with community leaders and advocates in the wake of the shooting, has acknowledged that people in the neighbourhood are too often victimized by gun violence. On Thursday, he called the boy’s death a “tragedy that should never have happened.”
“We must do more and better for this family and for the many families affected by gun violence,” he said on Twitter.
Paul Puneet, a 10-year resident of the Jane and Driftwood community, said he has typically felt safe in the neighbourhood, but the boy’s death has left him concerned. He used to feel that shootings impacted only those involved in a gang lifestyle.
“If that can happen to him, it can happen to anybody else,” Puneet said.
In the days after tragedy, the community will come together, people will “show up for each other,” they will organize around the issues, GoPaul said.
But for now, “we will take a moment and sit in this loss.”
“Nobody demands that the people that are perpetrating or involved in this activity, be … supported to change their minds, change their paths.” KNIA SINGH LAWYER AND COMMUNITY ADVOCATE