‘These kids are supposed to be eating ice cream’

How did a birthday party with balloons and a bouncy castle wind up with three kids shot? It’s ‘beyond comprehension’

Still wearing the clothes she donned the day before to celebrate the first birthday of her son — and also the birthday of the boy’s grandmother — the young mother thought she was ready to speak to media gathered Sunday on a lawn across from the townhouse complex where the bullets had flown.

But it was too early. Her hands shaking, she started to speak and stopped. Maybe, she said, in a few days she will be able to talk about what happened.

One bullet grazed her boy’s head and others fired Saturday evening at a shark-themed, outdoor birthday party on Tandridge Crescent struck two other children, including a five-year-old girl in the head, and wounded a 23year-old man.

On Sunday, the party scene still stood — balloons and lawn chairs in place, alongside a mini Mercedes kid’s car and a deflated bouncy castle — as police behind a large taped-off portion of the complex mapped out the area and searched for evidence.

Several children’s shoes littered the grass. One pair that looked like they belonged to a little girl were decorated with silver butterflies.

It could have been so much worse, agreed those who were at the party or live nearby, and spoke with reporters on the lawn in the shade of trees. But the absence of children speaks to what is left after shootings like this.

Most kids were inside, afraid to come out and worrying about the wounded children. There were lots of police but where are the trauma counsellors, wondered residents who live in an area in northwest Toronto that had been free from gun violence for a while. And to be sure, the trauma is there.

Emmalyn Redhead, a party attendee, comforted the fiveyear-old girl after she had been shot.

“She was just lying there. She wasn’t crying,” Redhead told reporters on Sunday. “I was just talking to her to make sure she was alert until the ambulance arrived at the scene.”

The girl had a bullet wound in her forehead, said Redhead, but the child was alert and responsive. She nodded her head when asked if she was OK.

“Just stay awake, OK?” Redhead told the girl, assuring her she would be OK. Others held her hand and tried to stem the bleeding.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Redhead, whose son of the same age smiled and played with a reporter’s microphone. “It could happen to anybody’s children.

“It’s someone that’s close to the family, and (who) I know, so it’s just something that I don’t think I can ever forget, just watching her. I don’t think she knew what happened.”

The one-year-old boy grazed by a bullet will likely be among the least traumatized. He was on the lawn as well, Sunday and giggled in the arms of a family friend, still wearing what appeared to be a white hospital bracelet on his small right wrist.

What led to the shooting is not clear — a “beef,” perhaps, was one of the rumours Sunday — but the sheer brazen nature of opening fire at a birthday party brimming with kids still stuns in a city where these things have happened before.

“It’s disgusting,” said Redhead. “They have no respect and it hurts my heart.”

A group of residents gathered around Toronto Mayor John Tory and Coun. Michael Ford Sunday evening when they arrived at the Toronto Community Housing development.

Many expressed concern that the community was lacking in support from the city both immediately after the shooting and in general over the years. The grandmother of the injured one-year-old, who did not want to provide her name, said she was not able to get into her house Saturday evening, because it was blocked off as a crime scene, and had to sleep in her car.

“We don’t feel safe here,” she said.

“This is a tragic and obviously unacceptable situation,” said Tory. “It’s behaviour that’s beyond reprehensible.”

Tory said he and Ford came to the neighbourhood because they had heard that support may not have arrived “as quickly as it should have.”

“We’re going to get them the support they need,” he added.

Tory urged anyone with information to come forward and speak to the police.

“I don’t know why anybody in the city of Toronto needs to have a handgun of any kind — and then of course using them in a circumstance like this, or anywhere, for that matter, but around children. I mean, who does that?” he said in an earlier interview with CP24.

Redhead said Sunday the family of the five-year-old got “a little bit of good news,” that she had come out of surgery and is “doing OK.” On Saturday evening, her condition was said to be “life-threatening.” That was upgraded to “stable” Sunday, and then back to “life-threatening.”

Police said an 11-year-old boy was hit in the buttock and the wounded man hit in the legs. At the scene on Sunday afternoon, a young man told the Star his daughter was shot, but he said he couldn’t yet speak about it.

Another woman who spoke to reporters on the lawn Sunday, and who did not identify herself, said she knows the fiveyear-old girl and her mother well, and said many others in the neighbourhood will also be affected by the shooting.

“All the other people that were affected, it’s a lot and they’ll remember this,” she said. “It’s summertime. These kids are supposed to be eating ice cream, playing games. The setting, there was a bouncy castle. Come on, now. I’m at a loss for words … except, parents, keep your kids close, and when you pray for your children, pray for other people’s children too, because this is not right.” To the person or people behind the shooting, “God go with you,” she said.

Police say they received reports of shots fired during the birthday party at the complex located on Tandridge Crescent near Byng Avenue in the Albion Road area shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday.

“The shooting that took place in Rexdale last night is inconceivable and beyond comprehension,” Premier Doug Ford said in a statement Sunday.

“No one who engages in this kind of heinous gun violence should get away unpunished. The perpetrators must be found and brought to justice.”

“As much as this is a horrific, horrific situation, it could have been worse. There could have been three dead children,” Toronto police Supt. Ron Taverner told reporters. He said there is nothing to suggest children were intended targets.

Taverner said investigators were “heavily involved in a number of leads” on Sunday afternoon, and that all details and theories from witnesses about the shooting were being taken into account.

“I can tell you, we have the resources to solve this crime. And we will solve it,” said Taverner, who described the incident as “unconscionable.”

Police say multiple suspects were involved in the shooting and were last seen fleeing in a vehicle.

Officers on the scene searched through dumpsters Sunday as they looked for evidence.

“My heart goes out to the victims and the families of the victims and to all the people that were involved, because this is a traumatizing experience for that neighbourhood, which is a wonderful neighbourhood full of wonderful people,” Tory said.

Kirsty Duncan, the federal Member of Parliament representing the riding where the shooting took place, said she was “horrified” by the incident in her community.

“What should have been a happy day became a terrible tragedy,” Duncan tweeted Sunday.

“This is irresponsible, outrageous behaviour. There is no other way to put it.”

According to data from Toronto police, there were 154 shootings recorded in the city as of mid-June 2021 compared to 193 recorded in 2020. So far, there have been 22 recorded incidents in 22 Division.