A 23-year-old Guyanese man, who is the main suspect in the weekend attack at the Toronto Eaton Mall, was charged with first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder, the Canadian media reported yesterday.
Christopher Husbands was said to be on house arrest on Saturday last when he allegedly opened fire in a food court, killing one man and wounding six other people and causing the downtown mall to erupt in pandemonium.
Husbands made a brief court appearance and was remanded into custody yesterday, the National Post said. The presiding justice of the peace ordered Husbands, who was born in Guyana and migrated to Toronto in 2000, detained and barred him from contacting the victims of Saturday’s shooting.
The dead man, 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan, was known to police, authorities said.
Police believe a 23-year-old man in hospital in critical condition, with bullet wounds to his neck and chest, may have had gang ties. Also in critical condition is a 13-year-old boy who suffered a gunshot wound to his head but was improving, police said on Sunday.
Four others injured by gunshots were treated and released from hospital.
A seventh person, a pregnant woman apparently knocked over in the panic, spent the night at St Michael’s Hospital when she went into labour, but the contractions stopped and she was released Sunday, the Toronto Star report said.
“Our investigation continues to suggest this is a targeted shooting and not a random act of violence against the public,” Detective Sargeant Brian Borg, the lead homicide investigator of the case, was quoted as saying at a news conference yesterday.
“There was one shooter and one gun,” he said. “Unfortunately, that gun inflicted a substantial amount of human damage.”
The Toronto Star reported that the two suspected gang-associated victims encountered the shooter in a case of “happenstance,” with the detective stating that “It was not a planned meeting. I don’t think it was intended. I think they came across each other unfortunately in a very bad location,” the newspaper further quoted Borg as saying.
Police would not identify the gang that the shooter and the victim were affiliated with and Acting Deputy Chief Jeff McGuire pointed out that police do not want to give credit to the gang by naming it.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Star conducted a telephone interview with the suspect’s father, Burchell Husbands, and reported him as expressing fear of his family facing retaliation from opposing gang members.
“Right now the whole family’s scared… We don’t know who’s going to come here just now,” he said.
The man explained to the Canadian newspaper that his son had not lived with him since he was 18 years old when he moved out of their Regent Park home. At the time of the shooting Christopher Husbands was living alone in the King and Bathurst Sts area, his father said.
The accused reportedly is father to a 5-year-old girl. Burchell Husbands told the Toronto Star that as a child his son was quiet and happy and got along well with his siblings. However, at 15 or 16 years old, he started getting in fights at school and was known to police for possession of marijuana, he said.
“He was in and out of trouble I tried to beg him to keep out of trouble,” Burchell Husbands said, adding that his son dropped out of high school and started running with gangs in Regent Park, thought he was uncertain which gang.
The man recalled two months ago when his son survived what he believed was a gang attack by six people when he was stabbed more than 20 times.
The man said he migrated to Toronto in 1993 and his son followed him there seven years later.
“We get along,” Husbands said of his relationship with his son. “He still comes around and visits.”
When asked what he would want the public to know about his son, the Toronto Star reported that there was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
“He was a good guy coming up,” he said. “He was good. Gang changed everything,” they quoted him as saying quietly.
