Scarborough shooting: We are all victims of gun violence

 

Toronto - On Monday night, during a busy neighbourhood party in the east end of Toronto, shots rang out. Two men got into an altercation and opened fire, fatally shooting two people — including a toddler — and injuring another 23. I woke up to the news everywhere — my favourite radio morning show, Twitter, newspaper websites. It seems that all of Toronto is gripped by awestruck horror, since this is the third such shooting in a public space in the past few months. For me, it was a painful reminder of another shooting at an event in a public space in Toronto.

This is the story of how gun violence has affected me.

In the early morning of July 27, 2008, I woke up in a hotel in Whistler, where I was staying during a business trip. I checked my cellphone and saw about a dozen notifications of missed calls and voice mails from the night before. I quickly checked my voice mail and heard my mom’s voice, telling me my cousin had been shot. My breathing stopped, and I stood in shock.

When I called her back, she gave me the details: he was working at an event in a large public park in the west end of Toronto . . . someone tried to steal his necklace . . . the robbery went wrong . . . shots rang out in the park — surrounded by children and families, right in the open . . . he was shot in the head . . . our family were gathered at the hospital, praying and waiting for news.

I got back to Toronto the next day and drove straight to the hospital, where I met my relatives. Despite red eyes and runny noses and jagged breath, there was something resembling calm over everyone; we all knew he wasn’t going to survive, and were just waiting for the news. It came, both overdue and out of nowhere: he was brain-dead. His mother was given the choice to keep him on life support for a bit longer, while she came to terms with his impending death. And then he was dead and we left the hospital.

Outside of the hospital, chaotic activity reigned: questions, accusations, suspicion, assumptions. Calls and visits from journalists, police, priests, friends and relatives. Funeral arrangements. Police security arrangements for the funeral, just in case the shooter was not a failed robber, but someone who might want to silence others who may be able to identify the killer. The activity was actually a blessing, as it quieted thoughts that raced through my head: Why would anyone do this? How could anyone do this? How can someone’s life be only worth a gold necklace? Who is this killer?

Two weeks later, an arrest was made, and I got one answer: the killer was a young man — 20 years old, practically a boy still — with a long rap sheet of increasingly violent crimes. Like the young man who opened fire in the Toronto Eaton Centre food court this June, he was under house arrest, but broke the terms of his bail, left his mother’s house and killed someone. A few months later, we learned more, when another man was arrested for shooting at someone on the Osgoode subway station platform. This second man was an accomplice and relative of my cousin’s murderer.

It’s amazing how quickly a mind filled with questions is silenced. Once the first arrest was made, I didn’t want to know any more. The thought of such a young man murdering another was overwhelming, and I locked the experience away.

My relatives did the same; we didn’t talk about this horrible trauma we had experienced, how our lives and world and trust in society had cracked and may never be repaired. We didn’t talk for almost three years, when suddenly we had to.

Another late-night call came in the winter of 2011. The trial was starting. Over five weeks, my family and I trudged to the courthouse on University Avenue and listened to testimonies from witnesses, police officers and medical experts. The horror of listening to the details of my cousin’s murder can’t be fully described. The attempted robbery took a couple of minutes; the gun was drawn when the gunman and my cousin were surrounded by hundreds of people, and then it was fired.

What was worse, though, was discovering how quickly it all happened. It is still unbelievable to think that someone could knowingly try to kill someone. It is also unnerving to know that a 20-year-old man could be so damaged and evil, and have so little respect for life; that we live in a city and a society that can shape — or fail to shape — such a person so dangerously unconnected to those around him.

I am often asked about my views on gun control and how to curb the violence between young black men. I have no answer to these questions; I just don’t know. What I do know is that this violence has far more victims than we realize. I am a victim of gun violence, as are all my relatives, the loved ones of my cousin’s killer, the people who were in that park that night, the EMS and police officers involved, the jury, and all of Toronto. Every one of these acts causes us to question our city and society, to be more fearful and to have less trust and patience. We are all victims of guns, and, somehow, we are going to have to work together to curb this violence.