Mother Of Multiple Shooting Victim Breaks Her Silence
Posted March 21, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It has been a grim holiday weekend in one Toronto household. While many spent Good Friday with family, the relatives of a teenager gunned down exactly a week ago at a North York housing complex are contemplating life without him.
It was last Friday night when squad cars and ambulances both raced to 87 Amaranth Court in the Dufferin and Allen area after a lone gunman came up to a group of friends gathered in a building doorway and opened fire.
When it was over, Abdikarim Abdikarim lay dead from a bullet wound to the head, while his five companions all suffered other injuries. The son the family lost that day was just 18 years old.
Now his heartbroken mother has finally broken her silence on the tragedy, recalling how his final words still echo with terrible irony in her ears. “I said ‘don’t be late,'”recalls Shamso Mohamoud. “He said ‘no, I will be back at 9:30.’ That’s the last words. He said ‘mommy, don’t worry. I’m going to be back at 9:30 for sure.'”
But 9:30 came and went and her boy didn’t return. Not long after, a relative came over to tell the worried mother the news that she’s still having trouble comprehending. “He said, aunt, Abdikarim was shot. I went outside. That’s when I saw so many police around, and I went there to the hospital.”
She arrived to the unthinkable news that her firstborn son was gone and his friends hurt. The crime, as the city now knows, was caught by security cameras, which police released to the public a few days later.
Authorities believe the shooter intended to kill all those assembled on the stoop, emptying his lethal weapon at close range. They’re sure the only reason the others survived is because they played dead, hoping the gunman would leave. When he did, they called out to each other. All of them answered except Abdikarim, whose silence will last their lifetimes.
“It was really shocking to see it on film,” admits Marian Abdikarim, the victim’s sister. “I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting something a little less tragic, but it was really shocking.”
But she wants to ensure the public understands one thing. “My brother was never in any kind of gang, gang related, you know grouping. He never affiliated with anyone of the sort. He has good friends. They’re all high school students, honour roll students, you know, ambitious kids. Like our parents brought us here for a better life.”
The boy was hoping to follow his sisters into university and come out like Marian, who has her degree from the University of Windsor and is heading to grad school. She knows he won’t be there to share her triumph.
“Words can never express, you know what I mean?” she asks. “Words can never express how much ambition, how much life, how much happiness in one person, and he was someone you never worry about, you know? You never worry that Abdikarim would stray away or go the wrong path.”
But when a killer’s path crossed his, that fate changed forever. His sister has managed to find a small glimmer of the positive in a tragedy that would seem not to have one.
“We don’t have six dead young men today,” she observes. “We have one rather than six, and I’m blessed that there are five other kids that are okay.”
His mother is also grateful, but wonders why her son was the one who had to die that night. She can’t conceive of a life without him.
“[He was] special,” she reflects. “You never know when it’s going to happen this. You never know. To who or why. There is no question why because the time is over.”
She says her faith is helping her cope with the tragedy “so much” and like the rest of her family, has only one wish now: to find the man who pulled that trigger and the unfathomable reason behind the horrible crime.
They’re convinced the conscienceless murderer has killed before and they fear he’ll do so again. They’re praying someone finds him before he ever gets another chance.
