Grief hits home for the mothers of Ritchie Street

For more than two weeks, a steady stream of visitors has been filing through the door of a modest home on Ritchie Street to offer condolences and comfort in the form of steaming casseroles and pots of soup.

The woman the food is meant for hasn't been eating any of it. Instead, Amuk Atak lies on a mattress in the living room, cocooned in blankets and consumed by grief. A rotating watch of South Sudanese friends tidy the house and try to distract her with small talk, but it's not working.

"I feel heavy," Atak, 41, whispers, patting her heart. "Manny is gone."

Manyok Akol was the fourth of Atak's six children and her youngest son.

On the morning of Jan. 8, just six months after graduating from Notre Dame High School, the 18-year-old was gunned down in his sleep at a Centretown Airbnb.

Two other young men and a 15-year-old boy were wounded in the shooting.

Three of the four victims grew up on Ritchie Street in Ottawa's Britannia Woods neighbourhood. Now, the women who raised them and worried about them wonder, who's next?

Inseparable friends

Manny Akol was a gregarious kid with an easy smile who would go on to volunteer at his local community centre. He and his cousin, Lual Akot, 19, and their friend, Sam Douf, 20, were inseparable growing up, more like brothers than anything else.

Together, they shared hip-hop ambitions and hoop dreams. Manny and Lual wrote rap music together under the pseudonyms Metro and Toka Dinero. Sam was always there, too, swaying in the background on their videos.

Lual had slam-dunked his way to an NCAA scholarship, while friends say Manny was edging closer to a recording deal. He was named after his father, but shared his mom's love of music.

Mother and son were always singing, even after Manny's father returned to Africa to work for the Sudanese government, leaving Atak to raise six children on her own.

"Manny loved his mom," said Atong Akot, Manny's cousin and Lual Akot's big sister.

"He just wanted to get her out of the circumstances or the difficulties we do face here on Ritchie."

At 22, Atong Akot has become the linchpin of the extended family, helping organize her cousin's funeral while offering support to her little brother, who remains in hospital — all while raising a two-month-old son of her own.

She wants the people who fired those shots to understand the harm they've caused.

"They don't understand what they put families through when they do this and decide they want to kill someone. They think it's just that person. They're not thinking about the ripple effects afterwards."

Warning shots

Manny had survived an earlier shooting in August outside the home of his aunt, Abuk Jaw.

Jaw, 41, spent days at her nephew's bedside while he recovered in hospital and her sister-in-law, Amuk Atak, scrambled to return to Ottawa from a visit to Africa.

Jaw said Manny had returned to Ottawa from Toronto, where he'd fled after recovering from the August shooting, just two days before his death. Jaw is convinced the two shootings are linked.

"Raising children in Ritchie is not safe. We're in danger. We need justice. We need help," she beseeched. "I just want to tell the police to find the people who did this."

Now she's terrified for her own son, who was also back home visiting when the shooting occurred.

Lual Akot has already undergone two surgeries and will require several more to reconstruct his face. The bullet went through his neck and shattered his teeth and jaw, but missed his brain.

Lual was supposed to return to State Fair Community College in Missouri last week, but doctors have told the family it will be at least a year before the six-foot-four shooting guard will return to the basketball court.

"He dreamed of the NBA," Jaw said. "I don't know how his future will be."

Jaw has slept at her son's bedside every night since the shooting. She worries the assailants will come back to "finish the job," and has asked for extra security at the hospital.

She's also asked Ottawa Community Housing to move her to a safer neighbourhood, but that will be difficult: Jaw has five other children and a grandchild living with her, and social housing units large enough to accommodate them all are hard to come by.

"I'm just holding my heart, but I am broken," Jaw said. "I want to be strong for the little ones, but it's not easy."

A mother's plea

Sam Douf, meanwhile, has been moved to a rehabilitation facility after spending two weeks in intensive care.

He was shot in the back, and his mother, Mary Awak, said doctors aren't sure if he will regain the use of his legs.

Just three years ago, Sam was part of the Next Level basketball team that won the Ontario U19 championships. He was a rookie standout, one of the top high school basketball players in the province.

For now, Awak, 42, is just grateful her son is alive, and can't imagine what Amuk Atak is going through.

"[Parents] are supposed to be buried by our kids, not we bury our kids," she said.

She's urging other parents to speak up about the violence plaguing their community. "If your son tell you anything ... please stand up for your kids, not [just] mine," she pleaded.

Difficult phone calls

When the gunmen burst into the Gilmour Street Airbnb and began shooting, a 25-year-old relative who had rented the place rolled off the mattress he'd been sleeping on and hid under the bed. He escaped the ambush unscathed and called 911.

Next, he called the victims' mothers to tell them what had happened to their sons.

Ottawa police have since released surveillance video of two young men seen running down Gilmour Street shortly after the shooting.

The video is brief and grainy, but for Amuk Atak, one thing stands out: the suspects look about the same age as her Manny. For all she knows, they're from a place like Ritchie Street, too.

She wants justice for her son, but it's tempered with a mother's mercy.

"If I see them, I would forgive them. Those boys are victims, too."