Toronto rapper Smoke Dawg among dead in Saturday's triple shooting
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Online condolences have identified the victims of Saturday’s daylight shooting along a busy stretch of Queen St. W. as a prominent Toronto rapper and producer.
Twenty-one year old Jahvante Smart — known as Smoke Dawg — was a rapper from Regent Park and associate of renown Toronto hip-hop artist Drake, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside Cube nightclub on Queen St. W. just west of Peter St.
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Also killed was 28-year-old Ernest Modekwe, a local music producer known professionally as Koba.
Their deaths represent the city’s 49th and 50th homicides of 2018.
Smart was an MC associated with the Regent Park-based Halal Gang, a crew involved in an ongoing feud with the Sick Thugz — a splinter group of the now-defunct Point Blank Soldiers, linked with the 2005 Boxing Day shootout that claimed the life of 15-year-old Jane Creba.
Smart toured with Drake during his 2017 “Boy Meets World” tour.
Just days before the fatal shooting, Smart posted a video on YouTube featuring a freestyle rap filmed in front of both the Niagara Falls Skywheel and throughout the Atkinson Housing Co-Op — the purported home base of Halal Gang rivals West Side Project Originals (P.O. Boys.)
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Throughout the video, Smoke Dawg prominently wears a large gold HALAL GANG medallion around his neck — speaking rhymes that seem eerily prophetic after Saturday night’s shooting.
“Who the hell woulda thought they put a price on his head,” the young artist rapped, seemingly referring to himself in the third person.
“But the hit was cheap, ’cause the shooters’ my dog.”
The shooting happened in a busy area of the Queen West strip, full of residents and tourists enjoying the hot, summer evening in what Toronto police sources described to the Sun as a “running gun battle.”
A third victim — whom the Sun has learned was an innocent bystander — was taken to hospital in serious condition but is expected to recover from her injuries, police said Sunday.
Tonya Gillard, visiting the city from Victoria, was a passenger on the streetcar that happened to be passing by at the time of the shooting.
“We heard shots, and the driver said ‘get down, get down,” she told the Sun.
“We all hit the floor.”
Some of the passengers in the packed streetcar cried as they hid from the gunfire, crying they didn’t want to die, Gillard recalled.
Speaking Sunday morning at the East York Canada Day parade, Toronto Mayor John Tory made no bones about his anger over the brazen shooting.
“I’m damn mad about this,” Tory said, adding that he spoke to Toronto police chief Mark Saunders Sunday morning about the shooting.
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Last week, the mayor called for a tightening of bail conditions for offenders with a history of gun offences — voting with a majority of city council to facilitate an emergency meeting with city staff, police and Toronto Community Housing to address the spike in gun violence.
“We’re going to round these people up and we’re going to put them in jail,” Tory said.
“And then, the real question is, will the system keep them in jail until their charges are dealt with.”
bpassifiume@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @bryanpassifiume
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