Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School grade 12 student Thomas Bolas says yesterday's double gun homicide doesnt scare him and that nothing has changed at the Etobicoke highschool accross the street from the Toronto Housing complex at 2063 Islington Avenue in Etobicoke, October 7, 2014.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
Toronto Police are pursuing several promising leads in the case of a double homicide near an Etobicoke high school that one investigator is calling "very solvable."
Detectives released five photos of young men they believe have information crucial to solving Monday's double slaying. The images come from security cameras in an apartment building near where the teens were killed and through which the shooter may have fled.
"We're getting some information in that we're currently following up on," said Staff Inspector Gregory McLane, who heads Toronto Police's homicide squad. "I'm very optimistic in this particular homicide. I don't want to put false hope in the minds of people, but we are in good shape here. It's a very solvable case."
Zaid Youssef, 17, and Michael Menjivar, 15, were gunned down as they gathered with other students to watch a lunch-hour fight near Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School on Monday. Zaid was a student at Don Bosco, and Michael attended James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School.
Staff Insp. McLane said homicide officers are still investigating whether the teens were part of the fight, which appears to have been a continuation of an earlier dispute.
He said the shooting is the logical extension of a disturbing pattern he has been noticing for some time.
"There seems to be an increase in the trend of young people with guns just from what I've seen over the last three years. And it appears that they're not afraid to use them," he said.
So far this year, Toronto has had five homicide victims under the age of 20 – three of them killed on Monday. In addition to the victims of the double shooting near Don Bosco, 18-year-old Yusuf Ali was shot and killed in Regent Park on Monday.
Police Chief Bill Blair broke three days of silence on the issue on Thursday, calling the shootings an unfortunate reflection of the changing nature of youth violence in Toronto.
"It wasn't that many generations ago that young people going outside of a school to resolve a dispute with a fist-fight was our biggest concern," he said. "When someone brings a firearm to that dispute, the potential for tragedy escalates exponentially. So we're very concerned about those weapons in the hands of young people."
During the so-called year of the gun that ran from 2005 to 2006, young gang members committed much of the gun crime that unnerved the city. "What we are seeing now," Chief Blair said, "is young people, not necessarily deeply entrenched in a particular gang, but adopting a gang culture, adopting a gang mentality of using gun violence to resolve disputes."
Jill Mahoney
Patrick White