Latest Murder Victim May Have Been Young High School Student
Posted May 11, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Witnesses valiantly tried to save him, but it was too late for Toronto’s latest murder victim, believed to be around 14 years old and a student at Runnymede C.I.
The teen was found gravely injured in a hydro field at 138 Eileen Ave. in the Dundas and Scarlett Rd. area.
A golfer at a nearby country club called 911 after hearing gunshots.
It appears he suffered several wounds to the torso.
“I just tried to put the compressions on his chest until the ambulance came,” said witness Melanie Cerby. “One tear I saw and then his eyes rolled back and we all just kept screaming ‘hang on’. “
“I am sorry that his mother is going to get that kind of knock on the door, but I want her to know that her son was not alone when he died.”
By the time paramedics arrived it was too late, and the young man was declared dead.
The victim was apparently clad in a Runnymede C.I. school uniform. The campus is just down the road from the scene of the killing.
So far, police haven’t confirmed anything.
Tex Eknes was sitting in his bedroom when the shots rang out. “I just heard like six shots or so. I was just in my room, I just came back from school. And then I heard all these shots and then probably five minutes later I heard all these police sirens.”
His father is perturbed that the violence that has plagued some areas has now invaded his new home.
“We had people getting shot at a building just down the street and I thought we were moving into a nice little cul-de-sac-y (sic) kind of neighbourhood,” Paul Eknes relates. “And now 10-15 feet away from my backyard someone’s shot dead. It spooks me I gotta tell you. It just spooks me.”
The motive for the killing isn’t clear, but witnesses at the scene say they saw drugs near the body, and a possible suspect jump a fence and take off through the Lambton golf course.
It’s the fourth murder in the area in the last 3 weeks, but so far police don’t feel there’s any connection between the crimes.
“There’s no information that I have that would lead us to believe that any of them are linked together,” said Det. Brian Borg. “We’ll be looking into that obviously because of the fact that there has been a number of other shootings.”
On Sunday, six people were gunned down during a celebration in a West Mall townhouse complex near Rathburn Rd. Police believe retaliation could be a motive for the crime, but miraculously, no one died.
