Boxing Day shooting

The Boxing Day shooting was a Canadian gang-related shooting which occurred on December 26, 2005, on Toronto's Yonge Street, resulting in the death of 15-year-old student Jane Creba. Six other bystanders—four men and two women—were wounded. The incident took place on one of Toronto's most crowded streets on the very busy shopping day, just a few blocks north of the Toronto Eaton Centre. The story generated national news coverage in Canada and influenced the then-underway 2006 federal election campaign on the issues of gun crime and street violence.

This article is about the 2005 shooting in Toronto. For Boxing Day sport hunting in the UK, see Fox hunting § United Kingdom.

Fatality
Jane Creba

Jane Creba (May 13, 1990 – December 26, 2005), a Grade 10 student at Riverdale Collegiate Institute, was killed in the incident. While shopping with her sister, she was exiting Pizza Pizza on the west side of the street, when the gunfight erupted. One bullet passed through her upper torso, lodging in her clothing; it was later recovered in hospital. She was rushed to St. Michael's Hospital and died during emergency surgery. [1]

Initial arrests

Police arrested two men on several gun charges at Castle Frank subway station within an hour after the shooting: Andre Thompson, 20, who was on probation at the time, and Jorrell Simpson-Rowe, 17.[2] Thompson had been released just before Christmas from Maplehurst prison near Milton, Ontario, where he had served 30 days for his role in a convenience-store robbery.[3] He declined a bail hearing for his current charges. Police believe as many as 10 to 15 people were involved in the shooting and that more than one gun was fired.

Later arrests and convictions

Twenty Toronto Police detectives were assigned to "Project Green Apple" (named after her favourite food[4]) to work on the case. On June 13, 2006, Toronto Police conducted multiple raids at 14 locations throughout Toronto in the early morning, arresting six men and two teenagers. Charges laid against them included manslaughter, second-degree murder, and attempted murder relating to the six other bystanders. All arrested are members of two different street gangs.[5]

In October 2007, a young man who was rounded up in the initial arrests, Eric Boateng, was shot dead in a seemingly unconnected incident. Boateng was not charged with the shooting, but was later charged with cocaine trafficking.[6]

As of December 2007, ten people have been charged with murder or manslaughter in the case, three of whom are youths. Those charged with second-degree murder include Tyshaun Barnett and Louis Woodcock, both 19, Jeremiah Valentine, 24, and Jorrell Simpson-Rowe, who was 17 at the time of the shootings. One of the teenagers who was arrested in June and charged with manslaughter was exonerated on October 25, 2007 after the preliminary hearing. The teenager charged with murder was committed to trial.[7]

On December 7, 2008, Jorrell Simpson-Rowe, previously known as JSR because the Youth Criminal Justice Act forbids disclosure of identities of minors, was convicted by a jury of murder in the second degree. In April 2009, he was sentenced as an adult to life in prison with no chance of parole for seven years.[8]

In November 2009, manslaughter charges against four individuals involved in the incident were dropped because the prosecutors "felt there were no reasonable prospects for conviction".[9] The four were alleged by prosecutors to have had a "common unlawful purpose" in the incident, but did not fire a weapon.

In December 2009, one decliner, 27-year-old Jeremiah Valentine pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Creba's death and was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 12 years. And in April 2010, a jury found Louis Woodcock, 23, and Tyshaun Barnett, 22, guilty of manslaughter in the 15-year-old's death, but not guilty of the more serious offence of second-degree murder. They were also found guilty of four counts each of aggravated assault, relating to other people who were wounded by stray bullets that day.[10][11]

Media coverage and community impact

The Boxing Day Shooting was the subject of intense media coverage, particularly after a year in which the city of Toronto recorded 80 homicides and a city record 52 shooting deaths. Only one month earlier on November 18, 2005, Amon Beckles was killed outside the sanctuary of a church while attending the funeral of his friend, Jamal Hemmings, whose shooting death he may have witnessed a week earlier, on Eglinton Avenue between Oakwood and Marlee Avenues in the Eglinton West neighbourhood in the former city of York.

The incident was yet another example that led to 2005 being labelled by both the media and police as the year of the gun. Detective Sergeant Savas Kyriacou of the Toronto Police Service spoke for these people in saying, "Toronto has finally lost its innocence. I think we're going to feel this day for a long time to come."[12]

Creba's death has also caused much controversy over the causes of gun crime and the ways to handle the problem. Also controversial is the resurgence of the Guardian Angels in Toronto; they arrived in mid-January to visit the city.[13] Toronto street patrols began in July; however, the chapter had run into financial difficulties by September 2006.[14] Some coverage has also analyzed the disproportionate coverage Creba's death received, compared to the similar deaths of numerous men and women of colour.[15]

In 2016, some eleven years after Creba's death, author Anita Arvast released a book titled What Killed Jane Creba: Rap, Race and the Invention of a Gang War that draws into question the systemic racism that surrounded the case and still troubles Toronto.

See also

References
  1. Friesen, Joe; Appleby, Timothy (December 29, 2005). "Forensic tests key to origin of fatal bullet". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  2. Small, Peter (November 23, 2009). "4 acquitted in Creba shooting". The Toronto Star. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  3. "Alleged gunman fresh out of jail". National Post. December 31, 2005. Archived from the original on January 14, 2016. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
  4. "It was a wonderful dawn in the neighbourhood". TorontoSun.com. 2004-06-14. Archived from the original on 2006-06-23. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  5. "T.O. police charge 8 in Creba shooting death". CTV.ca. 2006-06-13. Archived from the original on 2007-03-12. Retrieved 2007-12-25.
  6. Appleby, Timothy (October 13, 2007). "Man targeted by gunman was arrested after Creba shooting". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved December 25, 2007.
  7. Appleby, Timothy (October 25, 2007). "One teen exonerated, another goes to trial". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved December 25, 2007.
  8. "T.O. man sentenced to life in Boxing Day gunfight". CTV. April 26, 2009. Retrieved April 26, 2009.
  9. "None accused of firing shots in Yonge Street melee". CBC News. November 23, 2009. Retrieved November 23, 2009.
  10. Jones, Allison (April 1, 2010). "Jury finds two guilty in Jane Creba Boxing Day death; four now convicted". Canadian Press via Yahoo!. Archived from the original on April 5, 2010. Retrieved April 6, 2010.
  11. Pazzano, Sam (April 6, 2010). "Manslaughter verdicts in Creba case". Toronto Sun.
  12. "T.O. shootings take city's 'innocence': Officer". CTV.ca. December 28, 2005. Archived from the original on May 7, 2008. Retrieved December 25, 2007.
  13. Resnick, Eliot (June 21, 2006). "Canada's Orthodox Guardian Angel". The Jewish Press. Retrieved December 27, 2007.
  14. George-Cosh, David (September 7, 2006). "Toronto: Broke, Guardian Angels may quit streets". The National Post. Archived from the original on January 29, 2013. Retrieved December 27, 2007.
  15. Black, Simon (June 6, 2012). "Youth violence in Toronto and our hierarchy of victimhood". The Toronto Star. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
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