HUNTER: Hamilton has highest murder rate per capita in east
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David Stevens, 46, is the first name on the list.
He became No. 1 when he was shot to death at his east-end Hamilton rooming house on Jan. 29.
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The people who killed him didn’t even get the right guy.
But that’s the way it’s been in 2020 for cops from one end of the GTA to the other.
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In Hamilton, according to Homicide Canada, the city now has the fifth highest murder rate per capita in the country so far this year, and the highest east of Winnipeg.
The ‘Peg, Regina, Saskatoon and Edmonton are the only towns more violent.
To date, there are 16 names on Hamilton’s homicide list with a little less than a month to go. That number will no doubt go higher.
Hamilton Police Det.-Sgt. Steve Bereziuk told the Toronto Sun that investigators have been buried in death during this most violent of years.
“It’s gone up, up, up … I’m hoping it’s just a blip like the one Toronto had a few years ago,” he said.
In 2015, there were just six murders in Hamilton and the city has a five-year average of about 10 homicides.
There hasn’t been a single reason for the murder spike, Bereziuk said.
“There’s really no rhyme or reason as to what’s happened this year or in the past,” Bereziuk said, adding that an added dimension increasing the investigative workload were a large number of Mob hits in the past three years.
“Those are tough to solve. It starts with Ange (Angelo) Musitano in 2017 and ended with Pat Musitano being murdered this past summer, although that happened in Halton. Those are big investigations.”
While the underworld war that has raged across southern Ontario has tapered off since the brazen daytime rubout of Pat Musitano, homicide has not sat down.
“We’ve had a lot of domestics, sons stabbing their mothers, bar shootings, drug deals that went south,” Bereziuk said.
And the numbers would no doubt be higher, the detective added, if not for top-notch medical care in the city’s emergency rooms.
“Medical staff have kept more than a few people out of our office. (The murder rate) could have been a lot higher, some were literally brought back from the dead,” Bereziuk said.
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Another positive sign is that the squad’s solved rate remains good — 10 of the 16 so far, with more arrests expected.
Bereziuk pointed out that most of the homicides have occurred in pockets of two or three and then things go quiet again. From March (the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic) to May, there were none.
In July, there were four homicides.
“It’s been a really tough year but we’ve managed and the solved rate shows that,” Bereziuk said.
In June, detectives arrested and charged Shajjad Idrish, 23, of Stoney Creek, with first-degree murder in the senseless slaying of David Stevens.
Idrish was already in the slammer after being arrested and charged with the Feb. 8, 2020 murder of Jason Kossatz at the Galaxy Motel in Brantford.
Last week, Hamilton cops announced four arrests in the stabbing murder of 20-year-old Brock Beck following a road-rage incident on a warm July night.
More difficult for detectives will be solving the murder of Jammar Allison, 26, snatched from a Toronto parking lot in 2018.
His remains were found in the Windermere Basin Park near the Burlington Skyway in October.
For Bereziuk and other Hamilton detectives, 2020 can’t wrap up soon enough.
It’s been a killer.
@HunterTOSun
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