Andrew Naidoo, a 15-year-old lad of Guyanese parentage was on Sunday shot dead in Canada, reports out of Toronto have confirmed. Both of his parents are from Guyana but he was born in Canada.
Andrew Naidoo
Grandmother Alythe Ford had not long returned from church on Sunday night when the gunshots rang out – pop, pop, pop, pop – and at first she thought it was noise from the heavy rainstorm. Realising what the sound was, she and her granddaughter snapped off the lights in their modest Rexdale apartment in northwest Toronto and hit the floor.
Then she stepped outside to the weed-choked courtyard. Lying on the ground, dying before her eyes as his horrified brother and mother frantically tried to revive him, was 15-year-old Andrew, a lad Ms Ford knew well and liked. He had been shot several times, but it was the gaping wound to his neck that was most visible. Andrew’s brother and mother tried to pick him up and comfort him, but Ms Ford, a retired nurse, knew better, and told them to put the boy down. She called for a towel, to stanch the bleeding.
“I was saying to myself, ‘What on the face of the Earth is this? What is this!?’ I was trying my best to see what I could do, and then the paramedics came and took over. I just walked away and started to cry.”
Many other tears were being shed Monday as residents of the bleak public housing complex on Martin Grove Road, where Andrew lived and died, mourned their loss. He was pronounced dead in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s trauma unit at around 11:30 pm, Toronto’s 23rd homicide victim in 2011 and the youngest. Of those 23 killings, 13 have been gun-inflicted, compared to six at this time last year, and 12 in 2009.
Andrew’s family emigrated from Guyana, but his father died several years ago, and Andrew lived with his older brother and sister and his mother. Born in Toronto, he had had brushes with the law, but they were minor, a police source said, and neighbours described him as a conscientious student. “He never gave anyone any trouble. To have this happen to him is really sad,” said family friend Joy. “He wasn’t doing anything, he was just talking with his friends and [the killers] they came up and did their thing.”
Homicide detectives said there were multiple suspects in the shooting, and possibly a second victim who may have fled the scene, along with the killers. At least 10 shots were fired, police believe. More than a dozen yellow markers lay in the courtyard of the two-storey Toronto Community Housing Corporation complex on Martin Grove Road, north of Finch Avenue.
As identification officers scoured the scene, more markers lay in a nearby laneway. Andrew’s family are “devastated,” said Detective Peter Trimble of the homicide squad. “It’s a 15-year-old boy….it’s terrible, it’s absolutely terrible.” Several witnesses are believed to have seen the violence erupt, and police urged them to step forward.
“This should never happen; not this way,” said Joy. “It’s like you lost one of your own.” The shooting hit home, she said, because she once lost a sister to gun violence in Jamaica. Built in the 1960s on a busy north-south conduit, the aging, trash-strewn TCHC complex comprises about 150 units and has seen better days. Nor is this the first time police from 23 Division have responded to a gun call there. Two weeks ago, police visited another section of the development after a shooting. No one was injured in that incident. Ms Ford has lived there since 1973, and until the past few years it was peaceful, she said. (The Globe and Mail)
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