NIKITIN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-06-19 published
ZINIAK,
Zinaida "
Zina"
Registered Nurse, Maternity Ward, Saint_Joseph's Hospital for over
30 years. Peacefully at Baycrest Hospital on Sunday, June 17,
2007. Zina, beloved wife of the late Sergei Khmara
ZINIAK.
Dear
mother of Ina and her husband Philip
BOYKO-
VEKIN and Madeline
and her husband Alex
MORIN.
Grandmother of Andre, Misha, Dimitri,
Grisha and Alex. Loving sister of Dimitri
NIKITIN and the late
Serge NIKITIN.
Zina will be lovingly remembered by Mara
SERBIN.
Friends may call at the Cardinal Funeral Home, 366 Bathurst Street
(north of Dundas) on Tuesday from 6-pm. Panachyda on Wednesday
evening at 7: 00 p.m. in Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church
(23 Henry Street, south of College). Funeral Service in the Church
on Thursday morning at 10: 00 a.m. Interment at York Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, donations to the Palliative Care unit of
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre would be appreciated. Online
condolences can be made at www.cardinalfuneralhomes.com
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NIKOLAKAKOS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-09-12 published
Fatal stabbing shakes Toronto schools
Scarborough student slain at lunchtime
By TIMOTHY
APPLEBY with reports from Unnati
GANDHI,
Jennifer
LEWINGTON,
Karen
HOWLETT and Shawn
McCARTHY, Page A1
Toronto -- In a lunch-hour confrontation that dispatched fresh
shock waves across Toronto's school system, a 16-year-old Scarborough
student was stabbed to death yesterday on a walkway leading from
his high school.
Homicide detectives were hunting at least one suspect, seen fleeing
the crime scene at Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute in
a speeding car, and offered little insight into why the youth
- identified by CTV News last night as Denesh
MURUGIAH -
had been killed.
Suspicion, however, immediately fell on a long-simmering rivalry
between Tamil factions, whose animosity is believed responsible
for a firebombing and a stabbing in the same neighbourhood in
April.
What was certain was that the teen's death came just four months
after the shooting death of teenager Jordan
MANNERS in a high
school on the other side of the city. And, moreover, it had the
hallmarks of being planned.
"My Friends told me they saw the victim standing there when two
guys came up behind him and said, 'Do you want to do this now?'
recounted Ajay
MANGARA, 18, who lives a few doors from the
school, near Lawrence Avenue and Kennedy Road.
"Then they saw the guy screaming on the ground, 'Help me, help
me.' "
The teen was stabbed several times in the stomach and showed
no vital signs when paramedics responded to the 12: 05 p.m. call.
He died soon after in Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
Word on the street is that the killing stemmed from "Tamil reprisals,"
Mr. MANGARA said, echoing the opinion of a Lawrence Avenue pizza
parlour operator that caters to many Winston Churchill pupils.
If so, it is not the first time police attention has been drawn
to a Tamil-based gang conflict, loosely spread across half a
dozen Scarborough schools.
Students milling around the collegiate in the bright sunshine
yesterday seemed to know little about the victim, a new arrival
in his second week of school, and some appeared strikingly unaffected.
As television cameras hovered, several urged their Friends, "Don't
snitch, don't talk."
Yesterday's killing was Toronto's 57th of 2007 - 11 more than
had occurred at the same time last year.
The principal suspect is thought to be a male with brown skin,
17 or 18 years old, about 5 foot 5, wearing black jeans, a black
zip-up hoodie and a bandana covering his face.
Also sought is a light blue Honda, probably a mid-1990s Civic,
in which the killer or killers are believed to have fled.
Whether any of them also attended Winston Churchill was unknown.
But 41-year-old floor installer Jim
NIKOLAKAKOS, an alumnus who
has lived close to the walkway for most of his life, said the
school has become markedly rougher in recent years and that tensions
were often evident.
"There's a lot of rivalry going on in the school - kids from
this school, kids from other schools - they get together in little
gangs and it's all, 'You said this, you said that,' " he said.
"The whole school has changed; inside there's graffiti all over
the place, it's not kept up. There's no respect any more for
anything… Things have changed."
Others familiar with the sprawling 1,200-student school disagreed.
Jessica COPELAND, 19, was a student for five years and wept yesterday
as she arrived home to learn what had taken place almost on the
doorstep of her Flora Drive home.
"I just can't believe something like this would happen at Churchill
it was a really good school for me, the teachers were nice,"
she said.
"There were incidents, yeah, but they were really contained and
personally I never saw anybody with any weapons, not in five
years. Nothing ever got out of hand like this."
Toronto
Police
Service Inspector Kathryn
MARTIN said much the
same.
"I'm very familiar with the neighbourhood, I've spent 13 years
working in 41 Division and this is a very good school… so I'm
thinking this is an incident unrelated to the school itself."
Winston Churchill, however, is adjacent to a community centre
that last year installed closed-circuit cameras because of fights.
And in the past, local councillor Michael
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON has asked
nearby retailers not to sell knives.
Mr. THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON said of yesterday's homicide that he was "not shocked
but saddened."
Gerry CONNELLY, director of education at the Toronto District
School Board, denied rumours that the victim had been transferred
to Winston Churchill because of behavioural problems.
In fact, she said, the teen was a new student because he and
his family had moved into the Lawrence and Kennedy area from
Don Mills.
"I can't speak to behavioural issues, but he was not a transfer
student," she said.
The fatal stabbing nonetheless reignited the issue of safe schools,
which erupted in May after 15-year-old Jordan
MANNERS was shot
to death at his school in the Keele and Finch area.
As police quizzed witnesses: at nearby 41 Division yesterday,
Detective
Sergeant
Gary
GRINTON of the homicide squad alluded
to Jordan's death, in which two 17-year-olds have been charged
with first-degree murder, and appealed for public help.
"Do the right thing, come forward, man up," he urged the suspect.
Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty commented on the stabbing during
a campaign stop in Markham, Ontario, last night. "As Premier,
and maybe more importantly just as a dad, I wanted to express
my deepest sympathies to the family and Friends of this young
man who lost his life today in a senseless tragedy," he said.
Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory described the homicide
as symptomatic of a larger problem - the Liberal government's
alleged failure to crack down on violent crime.
"We simply let this kind of thing go on," Mr. Tory said. "We
simply have to deal with this kind of crime and the causes of
this kind of crime."
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