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<span style="font-style: italic">This crime took place in my community of Malvern.</span>
Shot dead for 'driving while black'
Three men go on trial for a gangland hit that ended with an innocent man killed and another gravely wounded
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
May 5, 2009
[email protected]
Leonard Bell had just gently needled his friend Brenton (Junior) Charlton, who was behind the wheel.
As they'd approached the turning-yellow light at Finch Avenue, Mr. Charlton applied the brakes and brought the car to a full stop. "I said, 'You could have gone through the light,'" Mr. Bell remembered yesterday.
Then he felt the impact and pitched forward. It was bewildering at first, because it felt like a rear-end collision except for the "continual explosions" all around him.
Once, as he tried to push himself up, he saw a flash from his right. Then he saw Mr. Charlton jump out of the car and collapse on the median; the vehicle, now driverless, began rolling into the intersection. Mr. Bell pulled himself up on his right side - he couldn't move the left - and yanked up on the hand brake.
Mr. Bell and Mr. Charlton had just become the latest innocent victims of what is alleged to have been street gang gun crime, carried out with blockhead lethality.
After four hours work at Mr. Charlton's house earlier that day - he lived with his mother, and she had hired Mr. Bell, a renovation contractor, to do some weatherproofing on the place - they were coming from an appointment at a bank in a local Loblaws store. Mr. Charlton was hoping to establish a line of credit, and Mr. Bell had introduced him to a friend who worked there, and Mr. Charlton was now driving him home.
Their sole offence, prosecutor Suhail Akhtar said yesterday, was to have been mistaken for members of one street gang by some of the members of another, though, at 31 and 43, Mr. Charlton and Mr. Bell would have been getting a little long in the tooth for that sort of activity, even if they'd been inclined to it, which they weren't. <span style="font-weight: bold">They were, however, black men, and perhaps that was enough.</span>
Mr. Charlton, who worked in concessions at the SkyDome, died "on the spot," as the man who said "I was proud to call him a friend" put it. Asked to describe him, Mr. Bell smiled fondly and said Mr. Charlton was "a fun-loving, very genuine, honest guy."
Mr. Bell was shot nine times - he heard the paramedics who treated him doing the count - but survived, though bullet fragments remain in his body and it took two years before he could get back to work. He is now 48 and still suffers respiratory problems and numbness in his lungs, lingering effects from the lead cocktail once delivered to his back.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The shooting happened in broad daylight during rush hour at a busy Scarborough intersection - Neilson Road and Finch Avenue East - on March 3, 2004.</span>
Charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and murder and attempted murder for the benefit of a criminal organization are three young men, Tyshan Riley, Philip Atkins and Jason Wisdom, now respectively 26, 25 and 23. All are pleading not guilty to all charges.
Their joint trial began yesterday before Ontario Superior Court Judge Michael Dambrot and a jury, more than five years after the shooting.
<span style="font-weight: bold">They are alleged to have been members of the Galloway Boys, a Scarborough gang, who were then at war with the Malvern gang, also based in Scarborough. </span>Some time earlier, the general state of animosity which existed between the two groups was apparently "transformed" into outright battle by the death of a leading Galloway member named Norris Allen.
As Mr. Akhtar told the jurors yesterday in his opening statement, Mr. Allen's death, which the Galloway Boys believed was carried out by their Malvern counterparts, "spawned a new subset of the Galloway gang called the Throwbacks and a new form of criminal activity called the Ride."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Ride gave a whole new meaning to brazen, profoundly stupid crime.
According to Mr. Akhtar, it saw the Throwbacks pile into a car, cruise into Malvern, and begin shooting at those they thought were members of the rival gang. These outings were called "Ride Missions," carried out by "Ride Squads."</span>
Prosecutors allege that the venture on the day in question was a Ride Mission involving Messrs. Riley, Atkins and Wisdom, "a mission whose objective was to kill another rival gang member. On that day, however," Mr. Akhtar said, "<span style="font-weight: bold">the three accuseds made a mistake - a mistake as to the identity of the victims they were shadowing in their vehicle."</span>
Thus, <span style="font-weight: bold">the Ride Mission was successful in that someone black was killed and someone black was nearly killed, but alas, with the devil being in the details, an abject failure in that the victims were two perfectly ordinary black citizens.</span> If the allegations are proven, it's as though the gang members were going about committing the offence police in many North American cities were for many years accused of, except that where the police were accused of stopping people for the mythical crime of "Driving While Black," the gangs were shooting them dead for the same offence.
Mr. Akhtar said his case will feature testimony from two former Galloway members or associates (one of whom will describe how Mr. Riley reacted to news reports giving the ages of the victims) and wiretapped conversations of all three men after the shooting.
But the first witness yesterday was Mr. Bell, who suffered directly, and the second a young black woman who was just 15 at the time, and whose identity is protected by a publication ban.
<span style="font-weight: bold">She had just picked up her little brother from daycare, and the two were waiting for the Neilson bus that day. It was the mention of the little brother that immediately brought her to tears: The shock of what might have been was evident.</span>
After a short recess, the young woman returned to describe what she saw and heard from her vantage point at the bus stop not 100 metres away - a small blue car stopped at the light in the centre lane; a dark SUV pulling up beside it in the right-turn lane; a barrage of "pop-pop-pop" sounds, smoke coming out the front of the blue car, a car alarm howling, then the sound of the SUV's tires squealing as it took off along Finch Avenue.
Asked where she thought the gunfire came from, she said, nearly in tears again, "I'm just guessing it came from the dark SUV. It came up [beside the small car], all I heard was gunshots and then it speeds off and the blue car is ... hurt."
She wasn't physically injured, but she and her brother were nonetheless horribly affected: On the day they waited for the bus, they instead were witnesses to this carnage, and <span style="font-weight: bold">two more black youngsters were introduced to the sight of a black man collapsing on the common road, dead as he fell from gunshots.</span>
Shot dead for 'driving while black'
Three men go on trial for a gangland hit that ended with an innocent man killed and another gravely wounded
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
May 5, 2009
[email protected]
Leonard Bell had just gently needled his friend Brenton (Junior) Charlton, who was behind the wheel.
As they'd approached the turning-yellow light at Finch Avenue, Mr. Charlton applied the brakes and brought the car to a full stop. "I said, 'You could have gone through the light,'" Mr. Bell remembered yesterday.
Then he felt the impact and pitched forward. It was bewildering at first, because it felt like a rear-end collision except for the "continual explosions" all around him.
Once, as he tried to push himself up, he saw a flash from his right. Then he saw Mr. Charlton jump out of the car and collapse on the median; the vehicle, now driverless, began rolling into the intersection. Mr. Bell pulled himself up on his right side - he couldn't move the left - and yanked up on the hand brake.
Mr. Bell and Mr. Charlton had just become the latest innocent victims of what is alleged to have been street gang gun crime, carried out with blockhead lethality.
After four hours work at Mr. Charlton's house earlier that day - he lived with his mother, and she had hired Mr. Bell, a renovation contractor, to do some weatherproofing on the place - they were coming from an appointment at a bank in a local Loblaws store. Mr. Charlton was hoping to establish a line of credit, and Mr. Bell had introduced him to a friend who worked there, and Mr. Charlton was now driving him home.
Their sole offence, prosecutor Suhail Akhtar said yesterday, was to have been mistaken for members of one street gang by some of the members of another, though, at 31 and 43, Mr. Charlton and Mr. Bell would have been getting a little long in the tooth for that sort of activity, even if they'd been inclined to it, which they weren't. <span style="font-weight: bold">They were, however, black men, and perhaps that was enough.</span>
Mr. Charlton, who worked in concessions at the SkyDome, died "on the spot," as the man who said "I was proud to call him a friend" put it. Asked to describe him, Mr. Bell smiled fondly and said Mr. Charlton was "a fun-loving, very genuine, honest guy."
Mr. Bell was shot nine times - he heard the paramedics who treated him doing the count - but survived, though bullet fragments remain in his body and it took two years before he could get back to work. He is now 48 and still suffers respiratory problems and numbness in his lungs, lingering effects from the lead cocktail once delivered to his back.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The shooting happened in broad daylight during rush hour at a busy Scarborough intersection - Neilson Road and Finch Avenue East - on March 3, 2004.</span>
Charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and murder and attempted murder for the benefit of a criminal organization are three young men, Tyshan Riley, Philip Atkins and Jason Wisdom, now respectively 26, 25 and 23. All are pleading not guilty to all charges.
Their joint trial began yesterday before Ontario Superior Court Judge Michael Dambrot and a jury, more than five years after the shooting.
<span style="font-weight: bold">They are alleged to have been members of the Galloway Boys, a Scarborough gang, who were then at war with the Malvern gang, also based in Scarborough. </span>Some time earlier, the general state of animosity which existed between the two groups was apparently "transformed" into outright battle by the death of a leading Galloway member named Norris Allen.
As Mr. Akhtar told the jurors yesterday in his opening statement, Mr. Allen's death, which the Galloway Boys believed was carried out by their Malvern counterparts, "spawned a new subset of the Galloway gang called the Throwbacks and a new form of criminal activity called the Ride."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Ride gave a whole new meaning to brazen, profoundly stupid crime.
According to Mr. Akhtar, it saw the Throwbacks pile into a car, cruise into Malvern, and begin shooting at those they thought were members of the rival gang. These outings were called "Ride Missions," carried out by "Ride Squads."</span>
Prosecutors allege that the venture on the day in question was a Ride Mission involving Messrs. Riley, Atkins and Wisdom, "a mission whose objective was to kill another rival gang member. On that day, however," Mr. Akhtar said, "<span style="font-weight: bold">the three accuseds made a mistake - a mistake as to the identity of the victims they were shadowing in their vehicle."</span>
Thus, <span style="font-weight: bold">the Ride Mission was successful in that someone black was killed and someone black was nearly killed, but alas, with the devil being in the details, an abject failure in that the victims were two perfectly ordinary black citizens.</span> If the allegations are proven, it's as though the gang members were going about committing the offence police in many North American cities were for many years accused of, except that where the police were accused of stopping people for the mythical crime of "Driving While Black," the gangs were shooting them dead for the same offence.
Mr. Akhtar said his case will feature testimony from two former Galloway members or associates (one of whom will describe how Mr. Riley reacted to news reports giving the ages of the victims) and wiretapped conversations of all three men after the shooting.
But the first witness yesterday was Mr. Bell, who suffered directly, and the second a young black woman who was just 15 at the time, and whose identity is protected by a publication ban.
<span style="font-weight: bold">She had just picked up her little brother from daycare, and the two were waiting for the Neilson bus that day. It was the mention of the little brother that immediately brought her to tears: The shock of what might have been was evident.</span>
After a short recess, the young woman returned to describe what she saw and heard from her vantage point at the bus stop not 100 metres away - a small blue car stopped at the light in the centre lane; a dark SUV pulling up beside it in the right-turn lane; a barrage of "pop-pop-pop" sounds, smoke coming out the front of the blue car, a car alarm howling, then the sound of the SUV's tires squealing as it took off along Finch Avenue.
Asked where she thought the gunfire came from, she said, nearly in tears again, "I'm just guessing it came from the dark SUV. It came up [beside the small car], all I heard was gunshots and then it speeds off and the blue car is ... hurt."
She wasn't physically injured, but she and her brother were nonetheless horribly affected: On the day they waited for the bus, they instead were witnesses to this carnage, and <span style="font-weight: bold">two more black youngsters were introduced to the sight of a black man collapsing on the common road, dead as he fell from gunshots.</span>
what this means is that the hassling of young black men is rampant.
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