A 15-year-old who was fatally stabbed at Scarborough Centre Station on Friday night was a “nice boy” who had a lot of life ahead of him, his mother says.
Kareem Derr was stabbed during a fight between two groups of people that were gathered along the platform of the transit station at around 9:20 p.m. He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead upon arrival.
No suspect descriptions have been released at this point.
“That’s my baby. They took my baby away from me,” Derr’s mother Sandra Murdock told CTV News Toronto on Saturday. “He wasn’t a bad kid. He was a nice boy. He was a little disobedient sometimes but he was a teenager. I don’t see what on God’s green earth you could do to somebody for them to kill him.”
Murdock said she last saw her son on Friday evening when he came into her room to tell her that he was going to go to a party.
She said she is grief-stricken over both his death and the mysterious circumstances surrounding it.
“Nobody knows what happened,” she said. “Everybody claims that when they came he was lying there but I know someone had to see what happened. I want the police to catch whoever did this to him and punish them to the full extent of the law.”
Speaking at a vigil Saturday in the spot where he was killed, Derr’s sister says the family is distraught, and cannot even set foot in his room at home
Police believe group was in Scarborough Town Centre prior to stabbing
Police say it is their belief that a group of young men and women had left the Scarborough Town Centre and were inside Scarborough Centre Station when they got into some sort of fight with another group of young people.
Derr, who was with the other group, was stabbed during that altercation.
“The platform was extremely busy and there were a lot of onlookers that upon the altercation scattered and didn’t stick around to assist police in their investigation,” Det. Jeff Tavares told CP24 on Saturday morning, noting that there may have been 50 to 100 witnesses in the immediate area. “We are making a plea to anyone who was at the scene who may have seen something or taken their phone out and recorded something to please call police. Every little bit of information we can get is going to assist us in bringing this investigation to a close.”
Tavares said that police have not yet determined what sparked the fight or figured out whether the victim knew his attackers.
The detective, however, said that he is hopeful that a number of surveillance cameras in the area will provide further insight.
“There is a lot of footage from the TTC terminal as well as the buses and local businesses,” he said.
Trains were initially bypassing Scarborough Centre Station following the stabbing but full service resumed on Saturday morning.
Friends and family of Derr are planning to hold a vigil in his memory near the boy’s home at 7 p.m.
