WARMINGTON: As Toronto mourns murdered child, it's clear justice elusive in many killings

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They will be wearing blue at a vigil for JahVai Roy to represent the slain eight-year-old boy’s favourite colour.

The whole city is blue as it mourns the murder of this kid, who should have been safe in his own bed. JahVai deserved better than what Toronto dished out to him. There’s no one offering him or his family an apology after the child was killed by a stray bullet. But it wouldn’t make a difference even if someone did.

He’s not playing in that playground at his building at Black Creek and Trethaway Drs. as he should be and never will again. He wasn’t allowed to get to his ninth birthday, let alone get to grow up and have a successful life.

It’s all so infuriating.

There will be a vigil Thursday evening outside the murder scene at 15 Martha Eaton Way to remember a boy who was senselessly shot through the window of his apartment building while in bed.

This will happen after his mom, Holly Roy, buries her child during a funeral planned in her home community of Wikwemikong Wednesday. There is also a “Justice for JahVai” rally planned Friday at 10 a.m outside of Toronto City Hall calling for a curb of gun violence.

“I am currently travelling back to our community to bury my son in a traditional burial,” Holly Roy told the Toronto Sun, adding she wants “to share his story” with the hopes that no other mom will have to go through what she is currently enduring.

While a noble pursuit, history shows this will be difficult to achieve. As the Sun’s front page illustrated Tuesday, Toronto is very good at eating its own young. So many people have died by gun. All some families have left are their pictures. They know the killers are protected by the system while their victims are discarded.

“Can you show the photos of the killers?” asked one reader.

This was a good point. And when I went back over the files of those on the front page, and some of the others mentioned in the column, one thing is very clear:  There is no justice for these victims.

In many instances, cases remain unsolved. Others are still before courts after years of legal wrangling. And in some cases, the people responsible have already served their time.

There is no fairness and closure on heinous murders. Just death.

As the Sun’s Michele Mandel reported in July, Jeremiah Valentine, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in fatal 2005 shooting of innocent bystander Jane Creba on Yonge St., was released on parole only to be accused of committing a murder several months later in Montreal.

Mandel also reported co-accused Louis Woodcock and Tyshaun Barnett, both convicted of manslaughter in the Creba killing, have been in trouble with the law  after being released.

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Mandel wrote “in 2017, with just one day remaining on his parole, Woodcock was arrested in Kingston and charged with drug offences” and “in 2018, he was convicted of having illegal possession of 30 grams of marijuana” and in 2024 was arrested by Toronto Police “on numerous firearm and drug-related charges which are still pending.”

As for Barnett, despite his lifetime weapons ban, he was last year sentenced to another 11 years in prison for firing four shots into a man’s legs in Ottawa in what the Crown described as a “revenge” shooting in April 2022.

Justice does not come easily in these cases and really doesn’t come at all. In the 2007 shooting of 11-year-old Ephraim Brown, the accused Akiel Eubank and Gregory Sappleton were found not guilty by a jury in 2010. In 2007, two unnamed 17-year-olds charged in the shooting in the CW Jeffreys school slaying of 15-year-old Jordan Manners were acquitted.

Nahom Tsegazab, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2012 shooting deaths of Shyanne Charles, 14, and Joshua Yasay, 23, at a Danzig St. barbecue has already served his time.

Faisal Hussain, 29, the shooter of slain Reese Fallon, 18 and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis, as well as wounding 13 others, shot himself in the terrifying Danforth attack of 2018.

In July — in the 2020 stray bullet shooting death of 12-year-old Dante Andreatta — a jury found Rashawn Chambers, Jahwayne Smart and Cjay Hobbs guilty of first degree murder and five counts of attempted murder. All face life sentences with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

The murder of 15-year-old Mario Giddings murder from September 2024, in a plaza next to the Martha Eaton Way murder scene, remains under investigation – as does JahVai Roy case.

In researching this, I found there are many unsolved shooting murder cases that remain under investigation.

There are too many cases to name them all, and we respect each and every victim.

But some of the unsolved cases that stand out to me are ones I worked on. They include Ariella Navarro-Fenoy, 26, who was hit with a stray bullet near the Muzik Nightclub where 23-year-old Duvel Hibbert was also shot to death at a Drake after concert party in 2015 on the CNE grounds.

The horrible case of the shooting of Ruma Amar, 29, in 2018 remains unsolved. She was caught with a stray bullet in a shooting outside a bowling alley on Samor Rd. The shooting also took the life of intended target Thanh Ngo, 32.

In 2018, Jenas Nyarko, 31, was struck and killed in a car at Replin Rd. and Old Meadow Lane. Her killer is still on the loose.

Time will tell if Toronto Police lay charges in JaiVai’s death and what any possible outcome will be determined in the courts.

But a community is shaken by yet another senseless and repugnant gun death of an innocent person.

Blue is the appropriate colour, but red would be good too because seeing red about all of these people being killed for no reason is what Toronto should be seeing.

Or at least they should be.