Family members say they are searching for answers after a 14-year-old girl was fatally shot in Rexdale Thursday morning.
The incident happened inside a townhouse on Jamestown Crescent near Kipling Avenue and Albion Road at around 10:30 a.m.
Lecent Ross was without vital signs at the scene and was pronounced dead in hospital about an hour later.
Speaking with CP24 at the scene, the teen’s uncle said he and other family members are struggling to deal with the loss.
“I have so many emotions happening right now,” Trent Ross said. “I know my brother is inside the house, and he’s grieving, and his wife is inside the house, and she’s devastated. Her daughter is gone, and it’s really hard for us to actually cope with the situation.”
He said the family had all been together for a function just a week ago.
“She was a smart girl – she was so many things. She really enjoyed being a kid. Unfortunately that’s ripped away from her now.”
At a press conference Thursday afternoon, police said they were not ruling anything out in their investigation, including the possibly that the teen may have accidently shot herself while playing with a gun.
Police have seized a prohibited semi-automatic handgun that fired the fatal shot and are testing it for DNA evidence.
Officers are also interviewing a number of other young people that were present in the home at the time of the shooting. A parent that was home at the time but did not witness the shooting is also being interviewed.
The victim did not live in the home and police say they don’t believe that she brought the gun there.
“People knew about this gun, it didn’t just show up,” Det. Rich Petrie said. “It came from somewhere. Somebody knew about it, somebody could have called Crime Stoppers or called police and they chose to turn a blind eye and here we are.”
Petrie said that police are treating the girl’s death as “suspicious” at this point but are not seeking any outstanding suspects.
The detective, however, said that charges could still “potentially” be laid either for the illegal possession of the gun or the firing of the fatal shot.
“I am certainly not ready to say that this was done intentionally by her or even an accident by her. I am not ready to go there,” Petrie said. “It is still an active investigation.”
Housing complex was site of another fatal shooting in March
The public-housing complex on Jamestown Crescent where Ross was shot has been plagued by gun violence in recent months and in March was the site of the execution-style shooting death of 46-year-old married father of two Donald Beckles.
Though Petrie said police do not believe that there is a link between Beckles death and today’s shooting, he admitted that the amount of gun violence in the neighbourhood and the city as a whole is disheartening.
Meanwhile, neighbours and family and friends of Ross are mourning the tragic death of the young girl and bemoaning the lack of answers around her fatal shooting.
“She was a really nice person. She is not a troublemaker. I don’t understand why this happened,” family friend Tracy Thompson told CP24 on Thursday afternoon. “I am so heartbroken right now; I don’t know what to say.”
"She was a very polite little girl, always going to school and always saying hi and hello, and she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," a neighbour, who didn't want to be identified, added. "Nobody knows what happened because they won't talk and it's hurting every mother. She was 14."
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