Jeremiah Ranger wasn’t the type of kid to wear a formal suit. Inside a North York funeral home Sunday afternoon, as his relatives and friends penned goodbye messages on his casket with permanent marker, he was wearing his favourite red track suit.
His mother had carefully dressed him. Jeremiah’s go-to outfit would be comforting to his four siblings when they saw him, she decided. He’d look just as he did at home.
“I got to see him. I got to dress him. He looks very good,” Krystal Ranger said calmly Friday, the first time she had seen her child’s body in the five days since his death.
The previous Sunday night, as Jeremiah lay dying not far from their home near Jane St. and Sheppard Ave. W., COVID-19 measures meant Ranger had to stand back as police tried to resuscitate her son, who had collapsed on the ground from a gunshot wound. She couldn’t go in the ambulance.
That night, Ranger said, she waited outside the hospital in the rain before she was told that her son was dead, and that she still couldn’t be with him.
Barely 15, Jeremiah was among Toronto’s latest — and youngest — victims of gun violence in 2020, shot less than 10 seconds after climbing into the back seat of a white SUV with a friend late last month, with a CCTV camera partially capturing their sudden escape from the car before Jeremiah collapsed off-camera.
Police have not made any arrests or provided information about a motive; Ranger said Jeremiah did not call the car that stopped and picked him up that night, and earlier this week she appealed for those responsible to turn themselves in.
Even in a pandemic, the city’s gun violence has continued unabated. More than 60 people have been shot so far this year, 15 fatally; three of those victims were 16 years old or younger. As other major crime categories in the city continue to drop — including robberies, assaults and auto theft — shootings are up 18 per cent over this time last year. Saturday night, a man was gunned down in front of a house in Scarborough’s Wexford neighbourhood in the city’s 25th homicide of 2020.
While it hasn’t stemmed shootings, the COVID-19 lockdown has complicated the Ranger family grief as they mourn the loss of a boy who loved music and basketball, who couldn’t wait to get his driver’s licence, who adored his mom’s cooking.
The funeral service was livestreamed Sunday afternoon from Emmanuel Church of the Nazarene, empty except for pastor Bill Sunberg. Ten of his relatives were at a nearby funeral home.
“It doesn’t matter what the circumstances, 15 years old is far too soon for someone’s life to be taken from them,” Sunberg said. “Especially in such a painful way.”
Unable to gather together, relatives made loving video messages that were played during the ceremony, expressing their grief and admiration for “Jermz.”
“You’re going to be very, very, very missed,” said his grandmother.
“He had these beautiful eyes where you could see pain and hope at the same time,” recalled one child and youth worker at Jeremiah’s school in a letter read by Sunberg, which described him as “kind, loving, fragile, protective and family-oriented.”
The Ranger family then held a visitation, with only small groups let in at one time and required to socially distance. Each mourner got a marker to write a goodbye message.
“I really want the children to have a way to get some closure,” Ranger said. “I’m so worried about his siblings and his friends. They are so young. How are they going to handle this? My heart’s breaking for these youth.”
Gun violence was all too common in Jeremiah’s life, Ranger said — “I had Jeremiah in 2005, the year of the gun,” referencing Toronto’s worst-ever year for gun deaths. His father and cousin were injured in separate shootings. When Jeremiah was 10 years old, he saw two men shot in front of him, Ranger said.
“It’s a dirty cycle and I’ve been living it for a long time,” Ranger said.
She said she has always been clear with her boys that if they ever brought a gun into the house, “I’ll be the first person to call the cops on them.”
Named after his grandfather who died three months before he was born, Jeremiah was a smiley kid, fourth in a family of five. But he struggled in school starting in junior kindergarten, Ranger said. Because of the traumatizing things he’d seen, he grew anxious and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, Ranger said.
At a young age, she alleges, police in the neighbourhood surveilled him, and mental-health issues meant he was bullied. He was never accepted within the school system, which “doesn’t know how to deal with these students,” she said, and he was frequently suspended.
“A lot of teachers, a lot of police, a lot of the community people didn’t treat Jeremiah well,” she said. “Now they have to live with that.”
He expressed concern about leaving the house, Ranger said — “the minute Jeremiah is outside, the police have something to say.” But he was also fearful about the violence unfolding around him, telling his mom he didn’t want to take the garbage out after 4 p.m.
Recently, Jeremiah hadn’t been attending school, and for years she struggled to get him access to the support services he needed. But Ranger said she fought for her son, and in the last seven months he’d been regularly seeing a therapist, working on decision-making and understanding that his actions had consequences, Ranger said. She’d been noticing positive changes.
“There had been more and more good days, and less and less bad days,” Sunberg said of recent months.
Ranger wants young people, especially those in the neighbourhood, to know there’s no shame in having mental-health challenges. She worries the children now affected by Jeremiah’s death won’t get the help they need, noting it’s often easier for them to get drugs and alcohol than grief counselling.
“And then when they are taking these substances, they are making wrong choices for themselves,” she said.
Ranger, who has initiated a GoFundMe to help support her family, is hoping her son’s death can bring about positive changes, including increasing supports for mothers who may wrongly feel ashamed to have struggling children, either in school or with their mental health. And she called for an end to gun violence, which she called “ridiculous.”
“If Jeremiah had to lose his life for something better to come out of this, I’m OK,” Ranger said.
“He’s not going to be here for me to touch him, and hug him, and yell at him and be pissed off at him, but Jeremiah will always be in my heart and my soul. He has given me a lot of memories.”
Among the most recent are from his 15th birthday last month, when Jeremiah had celebrated with his family and girlfriend. They’d had cake, and although Jeremiah had insisted he was too old to be sung to, he still blew out birthday candles.
“He was happy,” Ranger said.
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