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Published Feb 21, 2024 • 3 minute read
Toronto Police set up a command centre at Driftwood Community Recreation Centre near Driftwood Ave. and Jane St. on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024. The area has seen two recent shootings, one fatal.
The very real fear in panicked Driftwood is not if the bus stop killer will shoot again, but when.
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One was shot to death in cold blood. One was critically wounded from a gunshot to the face. Two shootings on back-to-back days. An alleged murderer and attempted murderer on the loose.
And one bus stop.
Toronto Police, who have heightened their patrols and have deployed an operational emergency command centre, are taking no chances. They are doing whatever they can to try to prevent a third incident. But it’s not lost on anybody that this deadly shooter in the Jane St.- Driftwood Ave. area is capable of pulling the trigger toward a third innocent victim who just happens to be in the same location as them.
The shooter certainly did a lot of damage with his first two victims. One is dead. Another one easily could have been killed.
“We believe these two victims were shot indiscriminately,” Det.-Sgt. Phillip Campbell told reporters this week. “One person is dead and the other has had their life altered forever.”
A gunshot in the face will do that. A 16-year-old boy, a top high school student who on Friday was merely waiting for the bus and has no connections to gangs or the criminal world, is fighting for his life in hospital.
Meanwhile, Adu Boakye, 39, a father of four who came to Canada from Ghana late last year, was shot to death near the same bus stop on Saturday. He, too, was just a guy minding his own business.
“Adu was shot while standing at the bus stop at Jane and Driftwood while waiting for the bus to go and send money to his wife back home in Ghana,” his friend, Richardson Adorsu, wrote on GoFundme. “A gunman walked up to him and shot him two times in his stomach and as he tried to run he fell and he was again shot in his face. Adu was the primary provider for his family with four children and also his elderly parents.”
Who would do something like this? What’s the motive to shoot people who have nothing to do with this person or the drug, gang or crime world? Gang initiation twice? Gang retribution — twice — on people not in gangs? Mistaken identity — twice? Drug related, even though neither victim was involved with drugs? Robbery? Mental illness?
This is the head-scratching riddle Toronto Police are working hard to sort out. It has left a community — and the city — stunned and concerned.
“The residents of this neighbourhood, many families with children, deserve to know they will be safe waiting at a bus stop or walking down the street,” Mayor Olivia Chow reportedly wrote in a statement to the CBC. “My heart goes out to the family of Adu Boakye and to the young person that was injured in the tragic and senseless shootings at Jane and Driftwood.”
There is a lot we don’t know. But here’s what we do know: Police are looking for a Black male, 18-25 years old, with a slim build who was last seen wearing a black coat, white hoodie, black pants and black face mask.
If you know him, call 911 or Crime Stoppers and do it fast. Life is just not the same in this neighbourhood with this person out there walking around freely.
Police located a stolen black Acura in Hamilton connected to these shootings. But they still don’t have this callous, gutless shooter of helpless, law-abiding people who had no chance.
Until they catch this heinous criminal targeting people waiting for a bus, people in Driftwood are not sleeping easily.
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