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Canada was
to be safe haven for Sirad Mohamed and family
Toronto, JUNE 09, 2009 – He was the last male in the family to be killed
but the first Canadian.
Ayoob Adam, 16, was visiting his aunt on the weekend on Dixon Rd.,
between Islington and Kipling Aves., when he heard a commotion below,
between the highrises.
He went down to investigate and ended up fatally stabbed in the chest.
"Wrong place, wrong time," his grieving mother, Sirad Mohamed, 52, said
yesterday, dressed head-to-ankles Somali style in black robes at her
apartment, several kilometres east of the crime scene.
In 1992, the boy's father disappeared in Mogadishu soon after the Somali
civil war broke out, she said. His body was never recovered.
That same year, the boy's older brother was killed on his way to Yemen
trying to escape the fighting, she said.
Three daughters, in their early 20s, complete the family.
Canada was to be their safe refuge.
Shortly after Adam went downstairs, at around 5a.m. Sunday, police
responded to sounds of gunfire at 340 Dixon Rd.
They found Adam on the ground behind the building along with another
youth, who had been shot.
Both were taken to hospital.
Adam was pronounced dead.
The other victim remains alive but police have not released his name or
details of his condition.
No witnesses have come forward, Adam's mother said, leaving her with
almost no information about what took place.
Her features pinched and lined, she stood at her apartment door
surrounded by similarly dressed women who helped comfort her and
translated, while others occasionally arrived with bowls of salads and
platters of hot food covered in foil.
"This has to be stopped," the mother said quietly of the youth violence
plaguing the community. "Nobody is helping."
On the family's arrival in Canada, they moved to the Kingsview Complex
on Dixon Rd., one friend said.
Mohamed volunteered at the community centre.
Adam made lasting boyhood friendships, which he kept up after the family
moved several years ago to the Jane St. and Highway 401 area.
Adam was in Grade 11 at Nelson A. Boylen Collegiate Institute, on
Falstaff Ave., a school of 400 students with the motto, "Good things
come from small schools."
"We need a stepping stone," said one woman who declined to give her name
but said her nephew was "gunned down" in 2005.
"We live in a ghetto," she said.
"The system is designed for us to stay here. Our kids are at risk every
day. There are no jobs for them. Their only opportunity is to be
killed."
Another woman said security cameras might have made up for uncooperative
witnesses, but the complex has none.
The killing, said a third, calls to mind the shooting last year in
nearby Lawrence Heights of 18-year-old Abdikarim Ahmed Abdikarim. It was
caught on video but the quality was too poor to positively identify the
shooter or his companion.
Five survivors of that shooting sustained wounds but all refused to
testify, and the jailed suspects were released.
Source: Toronto Star, June 09, 2009
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