Montaque is Toronto’s eighth homicide of 2013, and the third to involve a victim under the age of 16.
Jarvis Montaque, 15, died after being shot in the torso late Sunday night.
Jarvis Montaque, 15,
was having a snack and listening to music with two friends outside the
townhouse complex where he lives when he was fatally shot in the chest.
Det. Paul Worden said
Montaque, a Grade 10 student at Fr. Henry Carr High School moved to
Canada only two years ago from Jamaica to live with his father and
stepmother at the Jamestown Cres. complex.
On Sunday, he was
standing on the walkway outside unit 123, a brown brick townhouse with
two units, just south of Jamestown Cres. near Kipling Ave. and John
Garland Blvd.
“They were listening to music, having something to eat,” Worden said.
Around 10:50 p.m., an
unknown male between 5-foot-5 and 5-foot-7, dressed in a shiny black
jacket with the hood pulled overhead, approached on foot from the west,
blocked from view by buildings.
The one street light that should have lit the area the boys were standing in was burnt out, Worden said.
The man didn’t say a word as he fired a single shot into the group, hitting Montaque in the upper chest.
The three boys scattered as the man fled the scene in foot.
Montaque stumbled down
a laneway between two rows before collapsing, separated from his
friends, who later came to his aid with additional friends and family
who were home at the time of the shooting.
“He makes jokes. He tries to make everybody happy,” said Montaque’s brother-in-law.
The man, who would not
give his name, had tears in his eyes as he remembered the younger boy
as studious, always returning straight home from school when classes let
out.
“The one time he’s just having fun,” the man said, his voice trailing off.
Det. Worden said
Montaque has no criminal history or previous contact with police and the
shooter was not recognized by either friend, who are both cooperating
with police and have given interviews.
“The motive for the shooting is unknown,” he said.
One woman who lives in
the complex with her children and asked not to be named said she was
asleep when she heard noise in the laneway.
“I heard running,” she said. “Just the running woke me up.”
When she looked out the upstairs window, she saw Montaque slumped on the stairs at the foot of a laneway.
“When I looked, he was laying on the floor,” she said.
The woman, who is
friends with the boy’s family at first thought he had fallen, but when a
friend approached crouching over the boy’s body and yelled for someone
to call 9-1-1, she picked up the phone.
“I’ve never heard him speak,” she said of a quiet Montaque. “The kid was a good kid, always.”
Montaque is Toronto’s
eighth homicide of 2013, and the third to involve a victim under the age
of 16. A post-mortem examination is to be scheduled.
“My kids are like,
‘Why are all the good kids dying?’” said the woman, who has lived in the
Toronto Community Housing complex for four years.
She said there were
once cameras installed on the exteriors of the buildings, but were
removed after she was told they no longer worked.
“You hear gunshots all the time,” she said. “They should have cameras here.”
The mother, for now, has few answers to explain to her children what happened.
“I’m scared for my kids to leave here,” she said. “Everyone’s a target here. I think our kids are all targets.”
