IDSINGA o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-12-03 published
Mother helpless as teen gunned down
By Martin MITTELSTAEDT,
Page A1
Keyon CAMPBELL was at home early yesterday morning doing nothing
more dangerous than playing video games with his Friends.
Because it was late, and a frigid night, his mother planned to
drive one of the Friends home - so she sent her 16-year-old son
outside to warm up her car.
But the seemingly innocent plan turned to tragedy when Mr.
CAMPBELL
was shot by an unknown assailant as he stepped out of his house.
He stumbled back into the doorway, around 1: 40 a.m., dying in
front of his distraught mother and aunt, who tried desperately
to save his life using cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
Police do not have a motive to explain why the teenager was shot
to death and say he may have merely been in the wrong place at
the wrong time.
"It's disgusting," Toronto homicide squad Detective Hank
IDSINGA
said of the killing. "It's a terrible thing to have happen and
to be found by your mother immediately after it happened, it's
absolutely devastating for her."
Police say there may have been three shots and do not know if
the gunman had accomplices.
The death raises Toronto's homicide toll to 80, closer to the
record reached in 1991, when there were 89 murders in the city.
Police suspect the shooter had been waiting just north of the
boy's home, and initially fled on foot. It had just started to
snow at that time, and police followed tracks looking for clues.
By police accounts, Mr.
CAMPBELL was a typical teenager. He worked
at a fast food restaurant, a job he took so he could buy a car.
He was taking Grade 11 and 12 courses at a high school that police
declined to identify and lived with his mother.
Although Mr.
CAMPBELL was known to police, he didn't have a criminal
record, or anything that would suggest activities that would
put him at a high risk of murder.
"Keyon CAMPBELL was a young, 16-year-old, bright student, employed,
and was killed in the front door of his house," Det.
IDSINGA
told reporters yesterday at a news conference.
"It's too early to tell right now whether he was a target. It
very well could be he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The shooting occurred at Empringham Drive, in a complex of neat
townhouses where police say there had been another incident recently.
The area is located in the northeastern part of Scarborough,
in residential subdivisions near the Toronto Zoo.
"There have been some shootings there in recent days and it looks
like he might have gotten caught up in it," Det.
IDSINGA said.
At the home yesterday afternoon, police and municipal workers
stood in the rain behind yellow caution tape, trying to melt
snow around the crime scene using a portable steamer, in their
effort to find clues.
A passerby dropped a bouquet of white roses on the hood of a
parked police cruiser.
The car that Mr.
CAMPBELL was supposed to turn on was parked
in the driveway, covered in a blanket of snow from the city's
first major snowstorm of the season. A boy's blue bicycle was
parked in the garage of the townhouse.
Police are asking anyone in the community with information on
the shooting to phone the homicide department or Crimestoppers.
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