Boy, 16, dead, another victim hurt, in double shooting at Etobicoke building

Article content

A 16-year-old boy died, and another youth was seriously hurt in a shooting at an Etobicoke apartment building.

Toronto Police identified the dead teen as Isaiah Fogah, of Toronto, adding that officers found two victims when they arrived at the building in The East Mall-Rathburn Rd. area at around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Both were rushed to a hospital, where Fogah died. The other sustained “serious injuries,” according to police.

Many neighbours, like Melina, said she heard shots and told her own daughter to stay safe in their apartment.

“I heard at least five shots, when I was in the bathroom,” said Melina. “I saw a guy running by who looked very startled. He ran past with a hoodie pulled over her head.”

She said that during the mayhem, fire alarms were going off in the highrise building.

“I am livid that somebody died,” she said. “Thank God, my daughter was inside.”

Lesley Oduru, who has lived in the building 31 years and works as a tenant liason, said he now fears for those living in the area.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

“Are we going to have to worry about retaliation?” said Oduru. “It’s now pretty much a war zone.
Everybody here will now be impacted by this shooting.”

Orduru added he didn’t know the dead teen, saying “he must have been a kid who came from another place.”

Oduru, who came to Canada with his family from Ghana at the age of seven, stressed that efforts need to be made to contact local police officers to determine what comes next.

“We can’t be fearful. We have to get better solutions for the area,” he said.

During a walk-through of the building Wednesday morning, Oduru pointed out a stairwell where there were splatters of blood from the 14th to the seventh floors. There was also blood on doors and walls on some of the floors in the building.

Media reports said that somebody had tried to bang on a seventh-floor apartment door for help. There were police evidence markers, blood streaks along the seventh-floor hallway walls and what looked to be a bloodied hand print on an apartment door.

Oduru, meanwhile, knows about gun-crime first hand as his good friend, Anthony Smalling, was gunned down in July 2011 at the age of 23 in the apartment building’s parking lot during a dispute over a woman.

Convicted of the killing, Juede Noel, 26 at the time, was sentenced in September 2013 to eight years in prison for manslaughter, wrote former Toronto Sun court reporter Sam Pazzano.