What Killed Jane Creba. Anita Arvast
your ancestry and your children.
Short and Boy were at Elmer’s, too. Drinking beer. Shooting the breeze. They weren’t the types who stayed low and out of trouble.
Growing up, Short was called Too Short because of his small stature. He got over that in his teens when he managed to get over the 5΄8˝ marker and condense his moniker. Marz didn’t think of Short as a particularly good-looking guy. According to him, Short was … well … short … and had “kind of buggy eyes,” and wore his hair “short-cropped … like it was just growing back from a haircut or something.” Short was also heavily scarred — on the forehead, between the eyes, and on each arm. His police files never identified the scars, but clearly he had a history of confrontations.
Boy was different. First of all, he was white, so he was sometimes called White Boy. With his formal name as Milan Mijatovic, he certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of the Jamaican Canadians that the majority of people in the city just assumed were the problem people in Regent Park. But that’s the way assumptions and stereotypes work. A way to simplify what’s actually complex.
Boy was about the same height as Short and he was good friends with Marz’s youngest brother, Kareem. He even gave Marz’s mom bail money to get Kareem out of detention one time. The money came from drugs and guns, but that’s just what friends do for each other. Boy didn’t typically get into much trouble even though he was known to be a major dealer. It was debatable whether or not he packed a weapon. He had Short do that for him on Boxing Day, even if Marz would eventually say otherwise: “I would assume [Milan/Boy] had a gun,” Marz eventually told police when pushed to testify. Marz’s brother wound up getting a gun for his own protection when he dealt. “And my brother’s not hardcore into it, but considering that those were his friends, and people are gunning at him, he got his gun.”
At Elmer’s, Boy and Short came up with the idea that they should go down to the Eaton Centre to get some shoes for their kids. Marz thought it best not to go downtown that day. He was the wisest of the lot. As he eventually told the court: “Cause I wasn’t in the mood to be in any situation where anything can happen. Where I’ll be involved in that situation.… Boy really wanted to go down to get the shoes. I forewarned him. Like situations might pop off down there. You might see people you might not like.”
What was going on in the hood? Well, there was trouble between some groups of people. Some guys from north Regent Park weren’t getting along with some guys from south Regent Park. Bigger than that, though. Some guys from various areas of Toronto weren’t getting along with other guys in various areas of Toronto. Not gangs. Individuals. Guys who just didn’t like each other.
There was too much already going on in the hood. Lots of shout outs and shootouts. The guys who’d been around for a while, like Marz, knew better than to put themselves out there on a public day when all this shit is going on. Boxing Day. Caribana. Big festivals and gatherings were a no-no if you knew people were looking for trouble or looking for you. Why bother putting yourself out there on a day when you know all your enemies are going to be out? Marz was several years older than those other guys heading downtown; he’d developed a code that comes with maturity — you don’t go looking for shit on busy days, let alone take your problems to the streets.
Inability to see the logic of this code might have something to do with the fact that adolescent minds aren’t fully developed. Laurence Steinberg is a professor of psychology at Temple University in the U.S. who has written extensively about the neuroscience of risky behaviour in youth. His brain imaging studies have shown that teenagers, for instance, respond to peer pressure in ways that make them behave recklessly. Neuroscientists at the Belmont hospital in Massachusetts have shown that adolescents rely much more on a part of the brain called the amygdala, while adults rely on the more developed frontal cortex.
What does this mean? It means teenagers brains aren’t yet wired quite right to make sound judgments. It means they use the “reactive” part of the brain more than the “thinking and strategizing” part. Of course, it doesn’t mean teenagers are wired to carry guns. But if they are, chances are they aren’t modulating emotional responses the same way that adults do — they aren’t thinking about the consequences. Seems the mood swings, temper tantrums, and stupid, risky behaviour exhibited in teens doesn’t have so much to do with raging hormones as it does with a brain that isn’t yet “working” as adults understand. Throw in some other stupid teenagers who aren’t logically wired, and the risk-taking ramps up considerably.
All this came together in Regent Park that day, with the more mature guys knowing rivalries needed to stay in the hood, while the younger punks wanted to head out into the world, rivalries be damned. As Marz would eventually tell it, “you can’t fix stupid” — even though he likely wasn’t referring to neuroscience. Bottom line is that most kids are going to rely on their peers to tell them what’s real rather than listen to the older folks passing on their wisdom.
Like many teens, they thought their parents or anybody even a little older didn’t understand the world they lived in — and certainly didn’t have advice to give them.
Like many teens, they got stuff wrong.
And so it was. As the party at Elmer’s wound down, Marz was adamant that he wouldn’t be putting himself out there, even if Boy was one of his brother’s closest friends. Marz opted to go home to watch some daytime drama on the television, while Short and Boy headed to Yonge Street. The two had already been targeted in their neighbourhood. Shot at several times, they wouldn’t take public transit and knew better than to stand on a street corner trying to flag a cab. They called one instead.
Marz didn’t know it at the time, but one of the reasons Short had been targeted was because he was ratting out some other brothers in an area of western Toronto called Black Creek. There was also a housing project north-east of Black Creek nicknamed “the Jungle” — high-density, socially assisted housing not unlike Regent Park. Short had lived there at one point, but now he was just serving as an informant to the cops about some of the guys living there and in Black Creek. So, it was ironic that on this Boxing Day, Short was wearing a T-shirt with a big stop sign on it. All the rage with some of the “tough guys” from the States. Under the big red stop sign was a single word. Snitching.
Seems Short was okay to don the wear without walking the talk.
2
Short, Big Guy, JoJay :
AKA’s, Thugs, and Hoods
I was born and raised in the ghetto.
Until it’s my time to come.
When it goes down and die young.
With the good ones they call us thugs and hoodlums.
… I’m from a park where we don’t play.
— Point Blank, “From a Park Where We Don’t Play”
In 2005, Regent Park was one of the oldest of the social housing projects in Toronto and one of the city’s biggest problem areas. It was essentially divided into a north and south side, with rivalries separated by just one street that cut east–west through the middle of it — Dundas. Short, Boy, and Marz lived on the south side. Marz lived there with his two brothers and mom. One brother was finding his way in the world, and one was finding his way on the streets — that was Short and Boy’s friend, Kareem. Kareem had a record and a propensity for hanging with the wrong boys, but he got lucky on Boxing Day; he would have gone downtown with Short and Boy if he weren’t locked up in the Don Jail, detained on drug and weapon charges. As Marz told it “85 to 90 percent chance [his brother] would’ve been with them.”
Kareem was a member of a rap group called the Silent Souljahs. They were from the south side of Regent. Point Blank was a rap group from the north side. Some guys actually didn’t give a shit what side of the park you lived in because everyone was suffering the same. But some guys did. This is what the media told as the main story in the aftermath of the shooting: north against south.
Two gangs. Too easy. Two rap groups with some rivalries and some members and affiliates who carried