Surrounded by the moving tableau that is always Toronto's Yonge Street, he stood there alone, quietly weeping. Just an average teenage boy, 16 or so, lost in his grief and somewhat hidden from plain view in a doorway. His streaming eyes remained steadfast on the scene directly across the street. Within his vision was a steady trek of people coming to lay a profusion of flowers at the Foot Locker, where just standing in the doorway on Boxing Day, young Jane Creba lost her life to a random bullet.
I had come upon the teenager hurrying my way to an appointment. The pain in the teen's eyes was something I'll always remember. He was like a young wounded animal, his trust and hope in the world blown away in a sudden blast of gunfire.
In those few second as I passed him, I wondered to myself whether he was a schoolmate, a relative or perhaps even Jane's boyfriend. Overwhelmed by grief, he was for certain what no adult ever hopes to see, a brokenhearted, inconsolable kid. I wanted to hug him, to just touch his hand and to tell him comforting things, but held back never quite sure whether it would be the proper thing to do. So I just uttered a feeble "Oh!" and went on my way leaving him to stare at 15-year-old Jane Creba's shrine from the privacy of a spot across the street.
When I had been making my way up Yonge before crossing the street, people were laying flowers and candles in front of the Foot Locker. The sadness was palpable, from the anguished look on the faces of people stopping by, but most of all because all that had happened there had nowhere left to hit but home.
To just imagine but not even come close to the heartbreak for all those who loved Jane Creba. To know at heart that she was killed when out shopping with her parents one day after Christmas.
The scene where it happened is just a stone's throw from the Elm Street offices of Canada Free Press, which for the past year has been too often recording online the Shooting Deaths in Mayor David Miller's Toronto.
after Boxing Day, most everybody wanted to believe that the politicians at all government levels would stop blaming everybody else but themselves, including the americans for what is nothing less than the decline of Toronto; that our prime minister would stop using words like "exclusion" in trying to explain Jane's death and that the mainline media would stop pandering to the politicians of the day.
On New Years Eve, the Toronto Star declared in front page headlines: "2005: The Year of the Gun" and said "the last fatality, 15-year-old Jane Creba on Boxing Day, may prove to be a watershed moment for Toronto."
But as CFP's arthur Weinreb was to write the very next day when sending in his update on Shooting Deaths in Mayor David Miller's Toronto: "So much for 2005 being the Year of the Gun.
"Needless to say, it was the first murder by handgun in the new year of 2006."
Toronto needs to be rescued, but the Calvary's over the hill.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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