Suspect In 11-Year-Old’s Murder Faced Charges In Shooting Of Four-Year-Old

Ephraim Brown is the latest Toronto youngster to fall victim to gun violence, but two years earlier, a four-year-old named Shaquan Cadougan was wounded in a callous drive-by and became the poster child for the city’s infamous “Year of the Gun.”

It seems history has a strange way of repeating itself. On Monday, 20-year-old Akiel Eubank and 21-year-old Gregory Sappleton were charged in connection with Ephraim Brown’s murder, but it turns out the latter faced numerous charges in connection with the Cadougan shooting.

Needless to say, the tie between Toronto’s youngest shooting victim and one of its youngest gun fatalities isn’t lost on police or politicians, who can’t hide from the latest public outcry.

As Brown’s family and friends mourn their loss and neighbourhood residents gather around a makeshift memorial in the Jane and Sheppard area, Toronto Mayor David Miller and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty are joining together with Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant in renewed calls to Ottawa for a nationwide handgun ban. Bryant suggested there are more than 215,000 registered handguns in the province currently.

But any legislative changes to come will come much too late for Brown’s grief-stricken family, much in the same way they would be far too late for teen Jordan Manners, a schoolmate of Ephraim’s who was shot dead at C.W. Jeffereys C.I. in May.

“His life was just taken from him because of careless people,” Manners’ mother, Lorraine Small, on Brown’s death. “It’s ridiculous … the government needs to step up and do something.”

Eubank was initially considered a victim in the Sunday shooting that claimed Brown’s life after turning up at hospital with a bullet in his thigh, but the alleged gang member with the Five-Point Generals was later arrested and charged. He appeared in Court Monday, while Sappleton was picked up later Monday. As for his connection to the Cadougan shooting, charges against him and two others were dropped, and no one has been convicted in the case.

Sadly, it’s not the first time gun violence has victimized a member of Brown’s family. In 2003 his uncle, Matthew Osborne, was shot to death in Scarborough.

It’s because of that sort of incident that Ephraim’s mother, Lorna Brown, rarely let her young son out after dark. She admitted Monday that she had made an exception Saturday night because it was a cousin’s birthday party.