The Nirmalendran brothers: a lifeline, just days before the Eaton Centre shooting

Christopher Husbands sat in a chair in O'neil Edwards office at Ryerson University on a day in late May, 2012. The two would talk about Husbands getting into school.

Three days later, on June 2 of that year, Husbands would fire 14 shots into the crowded Eaton Centre food court. Four bullets would strike Nixon Nirmalendran, his childhood friend.

"Still, to this day, it just blows my mind," said Edwards. "Three days. We were talking about getting him into George Brown College..." — Edwards pauses with a sigh — "...I still can't believe it."

Edwards is the chair of a Ryerson's Spanning the Gaps. It's a program that aims to give young people from marginalized communities access to higher education.

Nirmalendran was in that same office six days before the shootings.

This week on Metro Morning, a series called The Nirmalendran Brothers: A Story of Love, Fear and Violence, looks at what led to the violence that engulfed three Nirmalendran brothers and their former friend, Husbands.

'Keep the calm'

Edwards knew there were problems between Nirmalendran and Husbands.

He had heard of a vicious beating that happened in February, 2012, when five men, including Nixon and his brother, Nisan, ambushed Husbands, stabbing him approximately 35 times.

He always made arrangements to meet with the two separately. He asked his secretary to make sure their appointments were days apart, so that the former childhood friends would not cross paths in his office.

Edwards' passion is persuading young people who come from generations of poverty — where no one has ever had ever been to college or university — to see themselves differently.

The Ryerson program had its roots in Regent Park, in another innovative program called Pathways to Education, which did much the same thing at the high school level in a community where more than half the young people used to drop out.

"It's about hope and possibilities," said Edwards. "It's saying, 'I think you can do this.'"

Nirmalendran, the eldest of three brothers who lived in Regent Park, was in the third cohort of the Pathways to Education.

Edwards remembers him as "a skinny kid with baggy jeans and a baseball hat," saying he was more quiet than other boys his age.

In the Pathways program, Edwards agreed "mentoring" may be too formal a word for those conversations that happened between him and Nirmalendran.

But something must've connected, because the young man continued to visit Edwards into his early 20s.

"Like, he'd just come and like sit in a chair next to my desk for two hours," Edwards remembered. "But that's what we were here for. If they're here, they're not somewhere else."

Things began to change for the skinny Grade 9 kid with the baggy pants when his close friend, Alwy Al-Nadhir, was shot by police in a Halloween robbery that escalated out of control.

That was the beginning of pressures Edwards could only guess at — revenge and shady deals that played out at night after the teenagers left his office. The changes in Nixon were subtle, but Edwards could see him changing before his eyes.

"It was just so sad," he said. He said his pleas to Nirmalendran to stay away from crime just bounced off him by that point; he had become too hard to reach.

Edwards doesn't know all the details of what went wrong between Nirmalendran and Husbands. By the summer of 2012, both were dealing drugs. Both had done time in jail.

But even after that, they still came by Edwards' office.

"I was trying to work with both of them, trying to say, 'Keep the calm,'" he said.

Away from violence, toward education

But Edwards was not just trying to quash a simmering fight between the two. He was pushing for a more lasting peace. He wanted each young man to turn to education.

Husbands was already enrolled at George Brown. Nirmalendran was a tougher sell.

"'You want to come to university? It doesn't matter about your marks in high school. Whatever. Just come,'" Edwards remembered telling Nirmalendran.

"He was listening, and I would just keep repeating it. I was ready — ready to throw him in a class right away or get him registered right away."

But that's not what happened. Nirmalendran died nine days after the shooting. Husbands would be found guilty of second degree murder for his old friends' death, along with 24-year-old Ahmed Hassan, a friend of Nirmalendran.

Edwards remains in shock. He sees images of Husbands holding the gun in the food court and is at a loss.

"What good can you say? I knew that kid in Grade 9?" he said. "What can you say? That could have been my family sitting there, having something to eat."

Replaying that fateful week, again

Edwards' Ryerson program is based on the belief that education can change lives; that it can break through generations of poverty and social exclusion. Edwards has dozens of success stories to prove that education can do all those things.

But the two young men who came to his office that fateful week in 2012 still confound him.

"Looking back, I'd do it differently," he said of Husbands and Nirmalendran. "Just because I have more experience. I have more equity [at Ryerson], so I'd be like, 'You know what? You're not going home. We're going to stick you in residence, here's some clothes, and guess what? Class starts tomorrow. You don't ever have to go home. This is your new home.'"

Edwards pauses again.

"Now I know that," he said.

The Nirmalendran brothers series continues all this week on Metro Morning. On Friday, listen as Christopher Husbands' favourite teacher speaks about how things changed for him. Listen at 99.1 FM every morning from 5:30-8:30 a.m.