It has now been 172 days, or more than five months, since Faisal Hussain took his lethal walk along the Danforth on a Toronto summer’s evening.
By the time his rampage ended, two fine young people, 10-year-old Julianna Kozis and 18-year-old Reese Fallon, were dead, and 13 others were injured, some seriously. Hussain himself was also dead, it appears by his own hand, according to Toronto Police documents that were unsealed by court order in September.
Those documents provided the only hard information about the mass shooting or the shooter — or at least about what the Toronto Police were seeking to search in Hussain’s apartment — that has been released to the public to date.
Because the province’s Special Investigations Unit took the lead on the investigation — there were reports that two Toronto officers had exchanged gunfire with Hussain before he allegedly took his own life, and the SIU’s mandate is to probe any lethal or serious interaction with police — the Toronto force is seriously hamstrung about what it can say about the shooting.
Thus even this week, when Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders held a year-end press conference, Saunders deflected questions on the Danforth shooting.
The last time the SIU issued a press release about the incident was July 23, the day after the shooting, when it formally identified Hussain.
Since then, there has been only silence.
In September, a Post source suggested the delay was at the Centre for Forensic Sciences, where the SIU sends evidence for processing, including firearms from police who may have been identified as what the SIU calls “subject officers,” meaning those who were believed to have fired their weapons.
In simple terms, most guns and rifles leave unique “rifling” marks on the bullets they fire, caused by grooves in the barrel of the weapon. These can link fired projectiles to particular guns.
Indeed, according to SIU spokeswoman Monica Hudon, the SIU did early on identify two officers as “subject” officers, but “based on findings,” they were quickly re-designated as “witness officers.”
Neither SIU director Tony Loparco, nor his occasional stand-in, Joe Martino, replied to infrequent Post emails over the summer, asking what on earth was taking so long. Similarly, Loparco didn’t answer one Friday.
At the Centre for Forensic Sciences, meantime, deputy director Jonathan Newman told the Post in an email that he had “reviewed our files and nothing remains outstanding,” and that further questions should be directed to the SIU.
However, Newman didn’t reply to a second note, asking when the CFS had completed its work and sent the results to the SIU.
Another SIU spokeswoman, Jasbir Dhillon, told the Post Friday that the file is now “in the director’s office for his review.”
Asked if that meant the investigation was closed, Dhillon said it was ongoing until Loparco completes his review and makes a determination.
Dhillon also confirmed what Hudon said in September — that there are nine Toronto officers designated as witnesses and none as “subject officers,” or shooters.
Whether that means there was never an exchange of gunfire between police and Hussain is anyone’s guess. Is that what the firearms section at the CFS found — that none of the bullets which may have hit Hussain came from police weapons?
Similarly, there’s no way of knowing why the investigation has taken so long. The Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of U.S. president John Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, took about a year, or about twice as long as this one, to conclude and issue its report.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the one surrounding the Danforth shooting, there have been rumours galore (the unsealed police search warrant showed police were looking for links to extremism) as well as his family statement, released the day afterwards, suggesting Hussain had struggled with “psychosis and depression his entire life” and that they “did our best to seek help for him.”
Let’s see: A 29-year-old man armed with a gun walks along a street crowded with café-goers and ice cream-eaters; he fires at some people and spares others; he kills two of the youngest of the innocent; he ends up dead.
One wouldn’t imagine this was a great mystery requiring months and months of investigation cloaked in secrecy.
The only thing that is crystal clear in this mess is that the SIU has some ‘splaining to do, and so does the Centre for Forensic Sciences. Did someone drop the ball, and if so, which organization and why? And if not, then for the love of God, say so, and give the public some real information.
Please share this
No comments:
Post a Comment