WARMINGTON: Questions about emergency response times in shooting murder of teen
Logs show it took about 10 minutes from the first call to 911 for ambulance to arrive on scene where a 15-year-old boy shot was in Mount Dennis.
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If it was your kid bleeding out after being shot, every minute would feel like an eternity.
Even though it took 10 long minutes for an ambulance to get to a boy with a gunshot wound to the chest, it appears there will be no coroner’s inquest into what turned out to be a shooting murder of a 15-year-old teen named Jahkai Jack.
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We don’t know much about this victim so far. But what we do know is witnesses at the Mount Dennis shooting say this teenager was alive while people calling 911 were on hold trying to call paramedics to save his life.
About 10 minutes from the original call for help, first responders arrived. But the boy did not make it.
He was the Toronto’s 14th homicide of 2025 in the shooting tragedy at Jane St. and Weston Rd. at about 10 p.m. on Saturday. Witnesses say they saw a car roll up and fire, which resulted in the death of this teen.
According to witness accounts that were reported, the young man was looking at them as they waited for medical help. Some claim they were put on hold for up to 15 minutes. Part of the confusion stems from Good Samaritans placing the boy in a car and driving him to a nearby medical clinic at 170 Emmett Ave., which was not equipped with emergency medical equipment. Paramedics ended up treating him there. But he was pronounced dead.
The question is, do the authorities want to learn anything from this death? I have not seen enough interest so far. I do see deflect and butt-covering. To get to the bottom of it, I feel there should be a coroner’s inquest and I suggested this to Ontario’s Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer.
“While this case does not meet the criteria for a mandatory inquest, there are opportunities during the death investigation for recommendations to be made,” said spokesperson Stephanie Rea. “Investigating Coroners can make recommendations during the course of their investigation that could improve public safety or prevent further deaths. As the death investigation is on-going, it would be too soon to say if that would be the case here.”
But there are so many loose ends, questions and competing facts.
“There were numerous calls made to the 911 communication centre about the shooting on Saturday,” Toronto Police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said. “The first call for ‘sound of gunshots’ came into the communication centre at 10:01 p.m. After waiting in the queue for six minutes and 43 seconds … TPS and EMS were on scene by 10:11 p.m. The victim had been taken by a passerby to a health care facility down the street and from there was taken to a trauma centre by EMS.”
Meanwhile, Toronto Paramedic Services spokesperson Dineen Robinson said they became “aware of a 911 call when it is transferred to our Communications Centre from Toronto Police. On June 7, Toronto Paramedic Services received the call at 22:05. The first Paramedic unit arrived on scene at 22:11.”
She added “all 911 requests for medical service received by Toronto Paramedic Services’ Communications Centre are triaged using an accredited, industry best-practice system that prioritizes calls based on patient severity. Emergency Medical Dispatchers and Call Takers provide callers with lifesaving instructions over the phone while waiting for responders to arrive on scene.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters a long wait time like this is “not acceptable” because “every moment counts” and “people need help immediately when they call.” In an X post she wrote of a “plan to hire 362 more front-line paramedics and support staff over the next three years” and “we’re also adding 90 more 911 call takers this year as part of my 2025 budget so we can continue to bring those response times down.”
Whatever they do, it won’t help Jahkai Jack.
While it would be easier to let it drift away, in the memory of a young man we don’t know, perhaps this is a time where government can show us they care and illustrate a willingness to fix what went wrong here. Not just words, but action. From Jack’s murder, there needs to be something learned to save others.
The learning curve starts with people being put on hold when calling 911, more than six minutes before the call was put in the queue for ambulance response.
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Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw was in Ottawa on Wednesday and was asked about the response to the deadly Toronto shooting.
“We’re doing everything we can to ensure that our 911 operations centre is responding to people in a timely way,” he said, and “looking into the specifics behind that set of events.”
“We work very hard, tirelessly, every day, frankly, to make sure that we’re responding to Torontonians when they need us,” Demkiw added.
Toronto Police are working on the homicide end of this.
“The investigation will determine if this shooting was targeted and what the motivations were. That is ongoing,” said Sayer.
Hopefully somebody can help police find the killer of Jahkai Jack. Condolences to his family. Just think how you might feel if he was your child, struck by gutless gunfire and left for at least 10 minutes to bleed to death.
-with files from Bryan Passifiume
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