Toronto police have arrested eight men in connection with a homicide at an Etobicoke apartment building on May 31.
The suspects range in age from 23 to 35 and all stand charged with second-degree murder, among other charges, in connection with the death of 28-year-old Anthony Taylor.
“There’s no apology that can be made to make this right or to bring Anthony back to us. He’s gone forever and he’s not coming back,” said Anthony’s aunt, Richelle Taylor.
She said the family is struggling to understand what happened.
In a press conference following the incident, Toronto police said the incident was not a “random event,” but did not elaborate further.
Police also said they did not know the relationship between the victim and the first suspect who was arrested.
Seven more men were identified and Canada-wide warrants were issued for their arrests.
By June 12th all of them were arrested and charged.
“They need to make sure that they pay for it and they deserve whatever max sentencing and to know every day that they took a loved one from us,” said Richelle, adding, “they’ve ruined so many families, including their own.”
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The family said Anthony was at the building to help a friend move in.
“He didn’t live there. He was there helping someone move and I think there was an incident where they were approached in different areas, whether it was the lobby and then they got onto the floor that he was helping with the move,” she said.
“There was some sort of an altercation or incident where there was a group of those individuals and ultimately no conflict resolution on their end and he was shot.”
“We still don’t know why and even if we did know it’s not going to be a good enough reason for them to do what they did,” said Anthony’s uncle, Troy Taylor.
The Taylors want the public to know Anthony was more than just the city’s 12th homicide victim of the year.
“He was the brightest in the room. So he’d always laugh the loudest, he would smile the brightest… I think he was definitely someone who wanted to be someone to be proud of, and I would tell him all the time, and I hope he knows I am and we are forever proud of him,” Troy said.
They said Anthony loved sports, particularly basketball and football, but his biggest pride in life was being an older brother. He leaves behind three younger brothers and one sister.
Anthony worked at Malvern Family Resource Centre as a counsellor and he loved to support the youth in his family and community.
He also loved to cook and planned to study culinary arts.
“He would always experiment with meals and during COVID, that’s sort of where he sort of honed in on that, where he would try to be doing meal prep and things like that for others,” said Richelle.
The family launched a GoFundMe campaign for help with financial support in the wake of Anthony’s death.
“You never anticipate needing to do this sort of thing, especially for someone so young … you see a lot of this happen on the news and in fiction and you never would expect it would happen to somebody so close to you and definitely not to Anthony,” said Troy.
“It’s like a piece of us is now gone and I just don’t know how we’re ever going to get that back,” Richelle said.
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