It was a typical Friday for Jarvis St. Remy. After classes at Western Technical School, the 18-year-old went to his best friend’s apartment near Dundas St. W. and Scarlett Rd. to play video games. Around 10:45 p.m. that day — May 1, 2009 — he headed out into the chilly night to catch a bus home.
As he stood at the stop, someone shot him twice and fled down an embankment. Joanne Wilson, his friend’s mom, looked out the window when she heard the gunfire and saw the boy lying on the pavement.
“My son was freaking out and running back and forth. He was screaming and crying,” she said. Wilson waited with St. Remy until the ambulance came. He died shortly after.Ten days later, 14-year-old Adrian Johnston was shot in broad daylight in a hydro field a few blocks away. Neighbours came out of their houses and performed CPR on the dying boy, who was still wearing the uniform of Runnymede Collegiate Institute. He too died.
St. Remy and Johnston were the last two people to lose their lives in a string of shootings and stabbings in and around the former city of York that left eight young men dead in four months last year. Police blamed much of the violence on a turf war between four local gangs, most prominently the Five Point Generals and the Gators. Shortly after Johnston’s killing, they called in reinforcements and rounded up accused dealers and gangsters.
A year later, the area is quiet, and just last week, police arrested several more people suspected of belonging to one of the local gangs in a massive sweep. But six of the killings remain unsolved and relatives of the dead men are still desperate to know why they died.
One of them is Arlene Jackson, whose brother, Jahmelle Grant, 26, bled to death after being shot outside a Weston Rd. booze can around 7:30 a.m. Feb. 1, 2009. He was originally pegged as a member of the Five Point Generals, but police now say he may have been breaking up a fight between a group of women when someone pulled a gun.
“He was very fun-loving, he loved his family, he loved to party. I used to always say to him, ‘Watch out at your parties, especially at the after-hours,’ ” says Jackson.
She says her brother had some run-ins with police and had finished a stint in jail on a weapons charge just weeks before he was killed, but she doesn’t think he was in a gang.
It’s even less clear why St. Remy was killed. The teen had no criminal or gang history. His family remembers him as sweet and clean cut, the kind of kid who was always home before curfew.
“I miss Jarvis’ cleanliness — he was impeccable. He even ironed his underwear and socks,” his grandmother, Delores Watson, remembers with a smile.
His family believes his death was a case of mistaken identity, but police aren’t sure.
Det. Mike Carbone, the lead investigator, says he has some witnesses and suggests he just needs a few more pieces of evidence to solve the case. He won’t say if there is a suspect.
“We’re just looking for one or two more witnesses to break this open,” he says.
Det. Sgt. Brian Borg, the homicide detective leading the Johnston investigation, says he’s zeroed in on a few people who may have been involved, but the case has been stalled since last year. It’s not clear whether the killing was gang-related.
“There may be loose affiliations,” he says, adding that Johnston “may be a person who could easily be affected by (gangs).”
Lana Tisi, Johnston’s aunt, remembers her sister’s only child as a quiet boy with an irrepressible smile. She says he was attacked by a crew from a rival apartment building.
“Lots of kids are saying they know who did it, but no one will go to court,” Tisi says.
Three more killings from the area last year are unsolved: Kevin Boateng, 18, stabbed during a fight on Davenport Rd. on Jan. 16; Basil Bryan, 23, gunned down on Keele St. four days later; and Omar Waite, 29, killed on the evening of April 22 at an Eglinton Ave. W. bus stop.
One man has been arrested in the slaying of Daniel Da Silva, 22, who was shot in his BMW during a drug robbery Feb. 26, and two teens have been charged with shooting Daniel Lewis, 19, in a laneway April 21.
While homicide detectives haven’t got all the results they’re looking for, their colleagues elsewhere on the police force have.
Extra officers from the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) were deployed to patrol the neighbourhood last summer. Around the same time, police arrested Curlew Moulton, 34, and Eric Morgan, 41, two men accused of supplying the street gangs with drugs. They are in custody awaiting trial.
The violence has quickly tapered off. In the area where the officers patrolled, police have recorded just one shooting since last June.
Sgt. Jeff Pearson, coordinator of TAVIS, says police also mobilized the community to keep gangs out of their public spaces.
“One officer found a father to set up a baseball league in a local park and that helped deter (gang members), just having those extra eyes on them,” he says.
Several alleged members of the Five Point Generals were also arrested last week during Project Corral, a major police round-up of suspected gang members. They face a laundry list of drug, gun and conspiracy-related charges.
Steve Tasses, who has owned a video store on Eglinton Ave. W. near Keele for 26 years and founded the local business improvement association, agrees that things have improved since last year.
But he says the extra policing is a Band-Aid solution. He points to a lack of development in the area, partly fed by the stigma of violence, as creating conditions that allow gangs to colonize the neighbourhood and target local youths.
“These are not bad kids, these are nice kids. But when they get older and they drop out of high school or they can’t get work, these street gangs prey on them,” he says.
Jackson agrees that the type of violence that killed her brother needs a bigger solution than policing. She says that he, like many other young men, had trouble finding work because of his criminal record.
“If they can’t get work, then they turn to (crime), some of them,” she says, adding that her brother was so discouraged in Toronto that he considered moving to Jamaica to help his mother open a store. “I think he might have been happier there.”
Jackson isn’t the only one bothered by the what-ifs.
The night before his death, St. Remy told his mother, Clemee Joseph, not to wake him up in the morning because he was scheduled for a late start at school.
“I didn’t talk to him that day, I didn’t see him again until I went to identify his body,” she says, a year less a day after her son was shot. “I should’ve woken him up so that I could’ve seen him again.”
Source: Toronto Star Monday May 10th edition
Special thanks to Adrian Morrow for coming to my news conference and shedding light on these stories. Pls call Toronto Police Homicide Squad at 416-808-7400 if you have info on these murders!!!
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