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9-year-old Kesean Williams, shot dead in Brampton, just the newest name on saddest list
Jane. Ephraim. Shyanne. Breanna. And now Kesean.
Kids killed by bullets that found them.
On a downtown street crowded with Boxing Day shoppers, at a cousin’s birthday party, during a backyard neighbourhood barbecue, in the parking lot of a housing complex. Remember those names, from a time when such murders seemed grotesquely aberrant?
And now a 9-year-old boy watching TV in his own Brampton living room: Kesean Williams.
But each time, just a little bit less shocking.
Five young people — from toddler to teen — slain in the city and its suburban edges over the past two decades.
This time it wasn’t so random. Perhaps unintended as a target — not the victim his shooter had squared up, through the front window late Wednesday evening, a single bullet as far as police can tell, striking Kesean in the head.
That doesn’t make the tragedy any easier to comprehend. It simply raises more provocative questions.
The family — mother, two sons — had moved into the townhouse only a week ago, earlier than the Feb. 1 date they’d been scheduled to take occupancy, carting their belongings from another address just a few hundred feet away. That fatal bullet may have been meant for whoever had resided at 51 Ardglen Dr. before. But without design, randomly, as crossfire — no.
“I’ve been advised that the evidence shows that the house was targeted,” Peel Police Chief Jennifer Evans told a press conference Thursday afternoon. “And I cannot speculate further for evidentiary reasons. But I want to assure the community that this was not a stray bullet.”
Where is the reassurance in that? A child is dead and comfort should be extracted from the horror because it was somebody else’s son or daughter who ought to have been left lying in a pool of blood? Is that what we’ve come to?
The alternative to the scenario police are pursuing is that somebody deliberately set out to kill a 9-year-old and that’s just too repellant a concept. It has to be the other, surely.
“It is unfathomable,” said acting Supt. George Koekkoek, head of Peel’s homicide bureau. “It’s appalling to anyone to have a young child who’s sitting in his living room . . . watching TV and then to have that happen.”
“Just based on the physical evidence that we have, we’re satisfied that the residence was targeted,” Koekkoek stated. “We’re just not sure and we’re working to determine who the actual person or persons was that the shooter was targeting.”
Kesean was with his 15-year-old brother in the house when that bullet smashed through the window around 10:30 p.m. His “devastated” sibling was fiercely tweeting yesterday: “I feel you. I love you.”
“Can’t believe they took my sweet sweet Kesean from me I want you here.”
“I feel like they shot me not even my bro my bro just gone.”
“Told him I love him a million times and give him too many kisses to count . . . ”
“Wish I could just come to you right now and hug you up and everything he was the best bro always told me he loved me so much my #1 homie.”
In the annals of urban gunfire, and Toronto’s bloody history of youth-gang violence, 15 years old is hardly outside the realm of imagination for involvement in some kind of street-level feud. But there’s been no suggestion from police that Kesean’s brother may have been the intended victim. Both brother and mother, Tanya Garvey — she got home after the shooting — have been interviewed.
Also cleared of involvement were three passengers riding in a taxi in the vicinity at the time. They’ve now been designated as witnesses.
The previous resident of 51 Ardglen Dr., according to rumours on the street and superintendents who manage buildings in the area, was a crack dealer. That’s one of the flimsy threads that police are investigating.
It was not a drive-by shooting, said Koekkoek. Police are fairly confident the person who pulled the trigger was on foot and slipped away into the darkness, but they can’t offer even a vague physical description. No shell casing found, no suspects, no description.
“We’ve had numerous reports that we’re trying to sift through right now of people who were seen to have run from the area of various description and clothing. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to offer you today.
“We’re throwing every available resource to it.”
Hundreds of officers have been canvassing the area, interviewing locals, retrieving videotape from surveillance cameras.
More: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crim...mpton-shooting
Jane. Ephraim. Shyanne. Breanna. And now Kesean.
Kids killed by bullets that found them.
On a downtown street crowded with Boxing Day shoppers, at a cousin’s birthday party, during a backyard neighbourhood barbecue, in the parking lot of a housing complex. Remember those names, from a time when such murders seemed grotesquely aberrant?
And now a 9-year-old boy watching TV in his own Brampton living room: Kesean Williams.
But each time, just a little bit less shocking.
Five young people — from toddler to teen — slain in the city and its suburban edges over the past two decades.
This time it wasn’t so random. Perhaps unintended as a target — not the victim his shooter had squared up, through the front window late Wednesday evening, a single bullet as far as police can tell, striking Kesean in the head.
That doesn’t make the tragedy any easier to comprehend. It simply raises more provocative questions.
The family — mother, two sons — had moved into the townhouse only a week ago, earlier than the Feb. 1 date they’d been scheduled to take occupancy, carting their belongings from another address just a few hundred feet away. That fatal bullet may have been meant for whoever had resided at 51 Ardglen Dr. before. But without design, randomly, as crossfire — no.
“I’ve been advised that the evidence shows that the house was targeted,” Peel Police Chief Jennifer Evans told a press conference Thursday afternoon. “And I cannot speculate further for evidentiary reasons. But I want to assure the community that this was not a stray bullet.”
Where is the reassurance in that? A child is dead and comfort should be extracted from the horror because it was somebody else’s son or daughter who ought to have been left lying in a pool of blood? Is that what we’ve come to?
The alternative to the scenario police are pursuing is that somebody deliberately set out to kill a 9-year-old and that’s just too repellant a concept. It has to be the other, surely.
“It is unfathomable,” said acting Supt. George Koekkoek, head of Peel’s homicide bureau. “It’s appalling to anyone to have a young child who’s sitting in his living room . . . watching TV and then to have that happen.”
“Just based on the physical evidence that we have, we’re satisfied that the residence was targeted,” Koekkoek stated. “We’re just not sure and we’re working to determine who the actual person or persons was that the shooter was targeting.”
Kesean was with his 15-year-old brother in the house when that bullet smashed through the window around 10:30 p.m. His “devastated” sibling was fiercely tweeting yesterday: “I feel you. I love you.”
“Can’t believe they took my sweet sweet Kesean from me I want you here.”
“I feel like they shot me not even my bro my bro just gone.”
“Told him I love him a million times and give him too many kisses to count . . . ”
“Wish I could just come to you right now and hug you up and everything he was the best bro always told me he loved me so much my #1 homie.”
In the annals of urban gunfire, and Toronto’s bloody history of youth-gang violence, 15 years old is hardly outside the realm of imagination for involvement in some kind of street-level feud. But there’s been no suggestion from police that Kesean’s brother may have been the intended victim. Both brother and mother, Tanya Garvey — she got home after the shooting — have been interviewed.
Also cleared of involvement were three passengers riding in a taxi in the vicinity at the time. They’ve now been designated as witnesses.
The previous resident of 51 Ardglen Dr., according to rumours on the street and superintendents who manage buildings in the area, was a crack dealer. That’s one of the flimsy threads that police are investigating.
It was not a drive-by shooting, said Koekkoek. Police are fairly confident the person who pulled the trigger was on foot and slipped away into the darkness, but they can’t offer even a vague physical description. No shell casing found, no suspects, no description.
“We’ve had numerous reports that we’re trying to sift through right now of people who were seen to have run from the area of various description and clothing. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to offer you today.
“We’re throwing every available resource to it.”
Hundreds of officers have been canvassing the area, interviewing locals, retrieving videotape from surveillance cameras.
More: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/crim...mpton-shooting