JARVIS ST.REMY Tribute

Murder victim remembered
By CHRIS DOUCETTE, TORONTO SUN
Last Updated: December 29, 2010 8:20pm

Jarvis St. Remy would have turned 20 Wednesday if his life hadn’t been cut short by a gunman a 18-months ago.

The slain youth’s loved ones gathered to mark his birthday at the Dundas St. W. bus stop where he was fatally shot May 1, 2009.

“It’s hard,” Clemee Joseph said of marking her dead son’s birthday days after experiencing a second Christmas without her eldest child.

“Jarvis shouldn’t be gone right now,” she said, before urging other youth to put down their guns.

Flanked by her younger son, now 15, other family, friends and crime victim advocate Kemi Omololu-Olunloyo, the grieving mother appealed for people to come forward with tips in her son’s unsolved murder.

“I hope one day we can get that bit of closure that whoever did that can turn themselves in to the police and own up for what they did,” Joseph said.

St. Remy may have been killed in a case of mistaken identity. A young woman who dated him for a year remembers being the last one to talk to him that night.

Janielle Murray said they talked as he waited for his bus at Howland St., a block west of Jane St., after he left a friend’s place.

The phone suddenly went dead and she assumed it was a dropped call.

“But then I got a call from a friend telling me he had been shot,” Murray said, adding she thought it was a joke. “It was literally within seconds.”

She still can’t make sense of St. Remy’s death.

After singing happy birthday together, the friends and family released purple balloons, his favourite colour. Then Joseph revealed bit of happy news.

“I’m pregnant,” she said smiling. “And it’s a boy!”

Joseph believes the new addition to her family — due April 29 — is a gift from her dead son.

Sadly, evidence of yet another recent shooting could be seen just steps away in a nearby plaza.

Bullet holes and smashed glass mark the spot where another youth was shot in the leg Christmas Day.

The wounding happened about 90 minutes before Jordan Hosten, 18 was shot and killed at Jane St. and Woolner Ave.

chris.doucette@sunmedia.ca