3 victims of recent gun violence rest in same cemetery
Three young men who have been shot dead in Toronto over the past six weeks have been laid to rest in the same cemetery in the city’s north end.
Abdulle Elmi was the latest young man from the Somali-Canadian community to die as the result of gun violence on Toronto streets.
Elmi was shot multiple times in the early hours of last Thursday. His body was left on a street where homicide investigators say he didn’t belong.
Just 25 years old, Elmi was the city’s 26th homicide victim this year. His funeral took place Sunday.
Elmi was the cousin of Ahmed Hassan, a 24-year-old man who was killed in a shooting inside the north-end food court of the Eaton Centre, which also left another man with fatal injuries.
A few weeks after the Eaton Centre violence, another man from the Somali-Canadian community was killed by gunfire.
Hussein Hussein, 28, was found suffering from an obvious gunshot wound in a ninth-floor apartment on Harrison Garden Boulevard. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Hassan, Hussein and Elmi have each been buried in the same part of a cemetery near Jane Street and Steeles Avenue.
A man who was a cousin of both Hassan and Elmi told CBC News that his extended family is feeling “pretty crushed” over the loss of two young lives in such a short period of time.
“It seems almost as if we’re going into the ground faster than the grass is coming up,” said Abdulle Elmi, whose name is the spelled the same way as his deceased cousin.
