A 12-year-old boy who had been fighting for his life in hospital after he was struck by a stray bullet in an apparent gang-related shooting in North York last weekend has died, according to Toronto police.

The boy was shot as he was walking across the street with his mother as they were returning home from a shopping trip at around 2:20 p.m. Saturday near 25 Stong Ct., a street running off Jane Street, a block north of Finch Avenue.

According to police, two males jumped out of a car and started firing their guns at five occupants in a vehicle in a parking lot area busy with pedestrians, families and others. At least 30 rounds fired. There was no return gunfire.

The boy had been in grave condition at the Hospital for Sick Children where he died of his injuries Wednesday, Toronto police said.

Toronto police homicide Det.-Sgt. Keri Fernandes told reporters Thursday that charges against Rashawn Chambers, 24, and Jahwayne Smart, 25, have been upgraded to include first-degree murder in the death of the boy.

The fact that the 12-year old boy was not the intended target doesn’t mean there wasn’t premeditation, she said.

“This investigation has shown us that the two accused had planned to carry out murder,” Fernandes said. “They had a plan to murder someone that day.”

Fernandes did not identify the boy, citing his family’s request for privacy. The Star has confirmed the boy’s first name is Dante.

Police are still looking for a third suspect believed to have been driving the vehicle.

“I think it goes without saying what an absolute tragedy this whole occurrence is, and what it’s done to the community. It’s already fragile at best,” said Supt. Ron Taverner, unit commander of 31 Division, the police detachment where the shooting occurred.

Taverner appealed to the community to help police solve this crime and others plaguing the community, where there has been “unspeakable” gun violence that’s “terrorizing” good people. He implored those with any information to “let us know who the gun people are.”

“The gun violence in this community is higher than anywhere else,” he said.

“On behalf of @TorontoPolice I want to extend our sincerest condolences to the family of the 12-year-old who has sadly succumbed to his injuries,” interim Toronto police chief Jim Ramer tweeted Thursday morning.

Three passengers in the target vehicle, two of them teenagers, were wounded in the gunfire. All been treated and released from hospital.

Chambers and Smart were arrested outside a Canadian Tire at Bay and Dundas Street West around 5 p.m. Monday. Smart was on parole at the time of his arrest, Taverner said.

Police sources have linked the attack to a long-running dispute involving gangs based in the area .

According to a senior police source, one of the two men arrested in the shooting is the brother of a popular Toronto rapper who was shot and killed in a 2018 double-slaying on Queen Street West ; the man charged in that case had himself performed with a group of rappers based out of the North York neighbourhood where the 12-year-old was shot Saturday .

Two loaded firearms were seized during the arrests, each had one tucked in their waistbands, and a third handgun was recovered with a search warrant, a police source said, clarifying earlier information that suggested three guns had been seized.

Chambers and Smart are also suspects in two other shootings in the hours and days before Saturday’s daylight shooting.

The pair face 53 total charges, including one count each of first-degree murder, five counts attempted murder, three counts aggravated assault, discharging a firearm with intent to wound and weapons offences.

At the time of the shooting, Smart was on parole after serving part of a prison sentence relating to firearms. In August, York Regional Police issued a warrant for his arrest for allegedly violating a firearms prohibition order after a search warrant was executed on a residence. Smart had never been arrested over this charge prior to the North York shooting.

Earlier this week, a senior police source told the Star this and other recent shootings appear to be connected to long-standing warfare between gangs based in the Driftwood area north of Finch and others from the downtown Regent Park neighbourhood.

Smart is the brother of killed Toronto rapper Jahvante Smart, who performed as Smoke Dawg and was rising to stardom before he was shot and killed outside a downtown nightclub on June 30, 2018, the source said.

Marcell Wilson, a former gang member and co-founder of anti-violence and anti-gang organization One By One movement, said the shooting must prompt real change.

“He has to be the last one. He has to be the last child that dies for no reason — because some young people are upset with each other over really stupid s–,” Wilson said.

“It’s devastating. It’s tragic,” said Sam Tecle, a community leader with the youth organization Success Beyond Limits, which is based in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood.

“I don’t know how to make sense of it,” he said.

In a statement Thursday, the Jane Finch Action Against Poverty (JFAAP) said it was “deeply saddened” by the boy’s death.

“We once again reiterate that when anyone picks up a gun, and takes to shooting in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, that this is a collective failure of our society. We need to continue to take care of each other the best we can.

“We continue to demand social and economic justice so we can build a healthier and safer society for our children and families,” the group’s statement said.

Tragically, this is not the first time a child has been mistakenly shot and killed in Toronto.

On July 22, 2007, an 11-year-old boy, Ephraim Brown , was shot and killed at a birthday party in a housing complex at 1880 Sheppard Ave. W., to the east of the intersection with Jane Street, during a gunfight between rival gang members.

The little boy was shot in his throat.

Two men arrested for the crime, Akiel Eubank and Gregory Sappleton, were acquitted of second-degree murder in 2010 .

On Boxing Day, 2005, 15-year-old Jane Creba was shot and killed by a stray bullet outside the Toronto Eaton Centre in a gang shootout that shocked the city.

Her death sparked to intense public outcry and a massive police investigation that led to convictions of second-degree murder for Jorrell Simpson-Rowe and Jeremiah Valentine , and manslaughter convictions against two others.

Six years earlier, on a Sunday afternoon, June 13, 1999, in a parking lot next to a housing complex in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto, three-year-old Brianna Davy was struck in the head by a stray bullet as she sat in a car seat. She died instantly. Her father was shot five times in the chest and survived but was paralyzed from the waist down.

A forklift operator was convicted of first-degree murder after a first trial in 2001, but the verdict was overturned and a new trial ordered. He was acquitted after a second trial in 2007 .

Since 2014, 210 youth aged 13-29 and under — the range set out by the City of Toronto for targeted intervention programs — have been killed in Toronto. That’s, on average, one young person killed every 12 days in this city. This Star analysis does not include suspected or confirmed domestic homicides.

Like with all homicides, guns are the number one weapon used. Since 2014, guns have been involved in 166 cases of youth homicide or 79 per cent of those cases whether the method is publicly known.

Toronto continues to see near-record rates of overall gun violence. According to Toronto police data , 201 people had been killed or injured in the city as of Nov. 8, second-most by that date in records that go back to 2004, after 2019.

The 425 shooting incidents recorded by police so far in 2020 are tied with last year for the most by that date.

Correction — Nov. 13, 2020: This story has been edited from a previous version that misstated the day the 12-year-old died. Toronto police have since clarified he died Wednesday, Nov. 11. Police have also since clarified that Smart and Chambers are facing a total of 53 charges.

Councillor Josh Matlow says he knew his proposed 10 per cent cut to Toronto police would face an uphill battle because of the budget’s “untouchable” status.

“It’s the single largest line item in the city’s operating budget and almost every year it goes up,” he said this past week, almost six months after his motion lost a council vote eight to 16 .

He remains convinced it was the right thing to do. The move brought greater transparency to the police budget while responding to “clear demands” to reallocate police funds into much-needed community supports — to “prevent crime, rather than just trying to arrest people who commit it,” he says.

This year, police services across North American came under unprecedented pressure to change following George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. Anti-racism rallies and defunding protests have led some cities, such as Calgary, to look at shifting some police money to social service agencies — but always with pushback.

Change in policing doesn’t come easily, but not because there are any major impediments other than “politics,” says John Sewell, the head of a police watchdog group that has spent years watching its ideas for reform go nowhere.

“There’s no reason why city council just can’t say ‘sorry,’ or the (police) board can’t just say ‘oh by the way, we’re cutting back the budget.’ It’s an easy thing to do, but politically, nobody even wants to talk about it,” says the former Toronto mayor.

For decades, elected officials in this city have been timid to address issues of police spending, power and culture out of fear of being labelled “soft on crime,” Sewell’s organization, the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition , wrote in June when the defunding debate was at its apex.

The pushback is something Matlow got a taste of before, during and after his motion to cut more than $100 million from the budget, which included more than $1.2 billion in spending this year.

“This stooge, Councillor @JoshMatlow votes to defund & disarm the #police … yet we are the first call he makes when crime lands in his backyard,” Andrew Nanton tweeted during his bid to get elected president of the Toronto Police Association (TPA), which represents about 8,000 uniform and civilian employees. He also pledged to “target” politicians deemed “dangerous,” and senior police leadership, saying in another tweet: “The silent majority supports the Police.”

(Nanton lost the vote to Jon Reid, the police association’s director of uniform field services, this past week — but only by 86 votes out of more than 5,000. Nanton declined to comment after the results came in because he is a full-time officer not authorized to speak publicly. On Friday, Reid said that while he is opposed to any attempts to reduce police spending, “we’re not in the business of going out and intimidating or threatening anybody. We’re a professional organization,” adding, “challenging people as far as their positions is good and healthy.”)

For decades, both senior police leadership and the association have sounded alarm bells whenever the budget axe has appeared poised to take a whack at police spending, 89 per cent of which goes to salaries and benefits. Thirty years ago, a Toronto Star article cited a litany of examples of police using “chilling statistics and grim forecasts of what could happen if they don’t get what they want.”

By the time a burly and controversial cop named Craig Bromell stepped into the job as president of the TPA in 1997, the police budget had mushroomed to about $500 million. Then, and today, Bromell makes no apologies for using intimidation and bullying tactics, boasting that’s how the union scored some of its richest contracts and pushed spending to where it is today.

“We always got we wanted, so why wouldn’t we continue doing it? We never got turned down for a raise or a budget,” he said this past week.

Bromell proudly recalls negotiating “retention pay” to keep experienced officers from leaving the force. A victory that meant when an officer hit eight, 15 and 23 years on the job, his or her pay jumped by three per cent each time, which “sent the budget through the roof.”

To get it, the union played hardball.

“We were ready to go ‘blue flu’ on this, because when you lose people to other services, you don’t lose the sludges, you lose your best people,” he said. “Blue flu,” is where entire shifts call in sick, and other job actions. And Bromell also had another plan up his sleeve. Officers across the city would drive police cars to city hall, park, turn the lights and sirens on, throw the keys in the trunk and get into rented buses he had on standby, he says.

The police leadership told members of the civilian oversight board, who were at the negotiating table: “give him what he wants, this is what they’re going to do, and that was a massive start to what’s going on now,” Bromell said.

With a few exceptions, police contract negotiations have been more polite since Bromell departed for a career in broadcasting in 2003.

Nevertheless, the TPA, under the leadership of recently retired president Mike McCormack, successfully pushed back attempts to rein in the budget, and continued to negotiate above-inflationary pay raises, in contrast to other public sector unions.

In 2017, the Toronto Police Service announced a “transformational” plan to modernize and halt rising costs. It imposed a three-year hiring freeze to shave $100 million from the budget. That too was met, predictably, with fierce resistance.

The TPA took out a full-page newspaper ad in 2018 with photos of police board members — Mayor John Tory, former chair Andy Pringle and Chief Mark Saunders — under the headline: “These Guys Are Putting your Safety On Hold.” It was a reference to alleged longer wait times for residents calling 911, which was sprawled in blood-red across the printed page.

“It is a throwback to the old days of the way police union bosses acted,” Tory responded at the time. (Tory was likely referring to the Brommel era. In 2002, the TPA took out ads with headlines such as “Toronto isn’t as safe as you think” and “On many nights in Toronto’s west end, there are only two police officers on patrol after 2 a.m.”)

But by the time Tory said that, police had already lifted the hiring freeze one year earlier than scheduled.

Former city councillor Joe Mihevc was around in those years and grew increasingly frustrated watching the police budget grow while other city services were slashed, which has “been a pattern my whole political career.”

On principle, he repeatedly voted against the police budget — despite knowing the futility. It was borne of the frustration that police “get a big whack of an increase,” while “you have to crawl your way up to get a few hundreds thousand dollars for a student nutrition program, or open a youth centre.”

The TPA, he says, are the “best lobbyists in the world” and are masterful at stoking public alarm that budget cuts will compromise public safety — since the vast majority of the budget goes to salaries and benefits, any cut would mean fewer cops to fight crime, the thinking goes.

Sometimes, shocking current events send the same message, like when a high-profile shooting provokes calls for police and politicians to do more to stop the violence.

It’s a tough narrative to counter, Mihevc says.

“When you’re able to portray a sense in society that people aren’t being protected from harm, that’s a powerful, emotive tool that they use for their political and salary benefit, and have for quite a long time.”

Putting more cops on the street, particularly after a high-profile shooting, also scores political points — more so than extolling the long-term benefit of community investment.

Some politicians simply wave the white flag.

“How many battles can you fight?” Mihevc says.

Police also have other “tools in their toolbox” to fight cuts, including the threat that if council comes up short, the board can launch an appeal to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission because the Police Act requires them to provide “adequate and effective police service.”

But then policing sector experts stress that what “adequate” means is not spelled out in the law — nor have there been any OCPC decisions in the past 20 years.

While the Ontario Police Services Act has “adequacy standards” describing what capabilities each police service must have, they do no address any minimum number of officers, or describe what community safety results are to be achieved, notes Fred Kaustinen, executive director of the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards.

“ ‘Adequate and effective’ is notoriously vague and highly subjective,” he said.

Neither is there consistency from city to city. For instance, in Toronto has 167 officers per 100,000, in Ottawa it’s 122 per 100,000 and in Kingston it’s 153 per 100,000.

“It’s all over the map,” Sewell says.

Matt Torigian, a former Ontario deputy minister of community safety, chief of Waterloo Regional Police and now a fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, doesn’t see unions as roadblocks to change, despite the TPA’s track record.

“I think they’ve got an important role to play and I think for the most part they want the same thing. But they are standing there within the frame of the structure of what they’re given,” he says.

Before determining where public dollars should be allocated, there needs to be detailed analysis on what the agenda for policing in Toronto should be, Torigian says. It’s incumbent on police chiefs and police boards to do this.

“You can’t just say ‘well, we’ll just take the money and move it over there’ — where do you take it from?”

Laura Huey, a professor of sociology and criminologist, says the calls to defund police are occurring in a vacuum of evidence and policy.

“There’s little research to suggest that many of the social programs likely to be funded in place of police forces will do much to reduce the social problems that have become police matters,” she co-wrote in August for theconversation.com .

She has studied the economics of policing and points the finger at broader society for driving up policing costs.

“We’ve become so dependent on police for so many things that when we then turn around and ask to have cuts, it’s incredibly difficult,” she told the Star this in an interview from London, Ont.

Why, for example, do we turn to police when a loved one goes missing? We shouldn’t, she argues. “There’s hundreds of thousands of calls or service just on missing persons, and the overwhelming majority of those people come back safe and alive.”

Yet there is no empirical research on what will happen if, suddenly, we “take this money away and give it to upstream solutions.” (She blames governments for “chronically defunding and underfunding research in this area.”)

“Because we don’t have good, solid evidence on what could potentially work, everything’s a trial, (and) this is a really risky thing to do when you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Brommel says he’s open to the defunding discussion. But if it means laying off police officers — and cutting back on the services they provide — “how do we manage in the meantime?” he asks.

“You can build a community centre, open more libraries, you can put more money into communities right now, but it’s not going to affect anything for a long time.”

Correction — Dec. 15, 2020: This story has been edited from a previous version that misstated the years at which Toronto police officers received raises for “retention pay.”

‘He (Pant) was in a totally aggressive role and I think it obviously paid off for them getting a hundred’

‘It is pretty daunting to have him come in at seven and score the way he does’

England’s spin-bowling coach Jeetan Patel, on Friday, doffed his hat to young wicket-keeper batsman Rishabh Pant for taking the game away with his aggressive batting display on the second day of the fourth Test in Ahmedabad.

Pant’s scintillating 101 propelled India to 294 for seven as the hosts took a crucial 89-run lead.

“When players are allowed to play as well as they are and showcase the skills that they can … Rishabh Pant is in this side to do what he does, like he did today, take games away from the opposition,” Patel said at the virtual post-day press conference.

“He did it so well today, you know, he struck out of the middle, big applause to him.”

Pant found an able partner in Washington Sundar (60 not out) as the two forged 113 runs for the seventh wicket to pull India out of trouble after it suffered a collapse.

“… he (Pant) certainly came out after that tea break and took it to us. He was in a totally aggressive role and I think it obviously paid off for them getting a hundred,” Patel said.

“But the important part of him was the partnership that they created with Washington Sundar and for them to bat almost all the session without losing a wicket, hats have to go off (on) how they played there.”

The 40-year-old former New Zealand off-spinner said England were thinking of getting a lead after India were six wickets down at one stage.

“The game is still quite under the balance I believe. But I think Rishabh Pant and Washington Sundar, that partnership is huge,” he said.

“Going to that last session, as I have said before 153/6, 56 runs in arrears, we were hoping, that we can step up one (wicket) early and get through them and have a lead going into this evening.”

“But look whether there was discussion in the change room or not, but he (Pant) certainly came out and played shots a bit more, got more aggressive than and it came off for them.”

Pant scored the first 50 runs in 82 balls before changing gears to complete his third Test hundred in 118 balls, studded with 13 fours and two sixes.

“When a guy is striking as well as he has been this series, it is pretty daunting to have him come in at seven and score the way he does,” said Patel.

Patel praised English all-rounder Ben Stokes for taking the crucial wickets of rival skipper Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane.

“He got some crucial wickets along the way and did exactly what a second seamer would do,” Patel said.

“He (Strokes) is pretty cooked, as you can imagine, but he is war-horse, he loves it, he loves when it gets tough, hot and tiring, so hopefully we will see his best again tomorrow.”

While Jack Leach (2/66) took two wickets, Dom Bess didn’t have a good day in office.

“He (Bess) would have liked to bowl a lot better today, given a lot more to the group, but did not work out for him. They played him very well, they stepped on him and looked for balls to score off him.”

“Right now he would be down and tired about it, but the beauty of this game there is another opportunity tomorrow.”

‘You can talk about the pitch and about the ball and about anything else, but you have to find a way to score first innings runs.’

• SCORECARD

Former captain Andrew Strauss believes England’s batsmen are not good enough to tackle the spin-friendly Indian conditions after yet another flop show by the visitors in the first innings of the ongoing fourth Test in Ahmedabad.

England’s batsmen produced a shoddy performance and surrendered the momentum to India after Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin called the shots on Thursday, the opening day of the Test in Ahmedabad.

After five innings, England crossed the 200-run mark, scoring 205 in 75.5 overs before being bowled out.

“Let’s not hide away from the truth. England’s batting, quite frankly, is not good enough in these conditions,” Strauss was quoted as saying by Channel 4 .

“You can talk about the pitch and about the ball and about anything else, but you have to find a way to score first innings runs and they have got very few to play with.”

The 44-year-old Strauss, a former left-handed opener, feels England’s batsmen are losing the battle in their minds as they are committing the same mistakes they did in the previous two Tests.

“It is scarcely believable,” he said.

“England are making the same mistakes they have made throughout the whole series. The non-turning ball has left them non-plussed.”

England are trailing the four-match series 1-2.

India’s middle and long distance coach Nikolai Snesarev of Belarus was on Friday found dead in his hostel room at the National Institute of Sports here, the Athletics Federation of India said.

The dead body of the 72-year-old Snesarev, who returned to India after a gap of two years to be at the helm till the end of September, has been sent to a government hospital for post mortem.

“When the door was broken, he was found lying on his bed. The Sports Authority of India doctor at the NIS declared him dead and the ED (team) of the SAI has referred the body to the government hospital for post mortem.”

“We don’t know the cause of death. We will know it later after post mortem.”

Snesarev was at the NIS running track in the morning with his wards but did not turn up for the meet which started at 2pm.

“He died with his boots on, having overseen his wards’ training this morning,” the AFI said in its tribute in a release issued later.

Snesarev was coaching 3000m steeplechaser Avinash Sable, who has qualified for the Olympics, and other middle and long-distance runners in their bid to qualify for the Tokyo Games.

“I’m deeply saddened to learn about the sad demise of middle and long distance running coach Nikolai Snesarev. He has been a great coach and helped many medal winners during his association with India since 2005. My condolences to his family and the entire athletics fraternity,” sports minister Kiren Rijiju tweeted.

He had quit from the position in February 2019 after Sable opted to leave him and train under Army coach Amrish Kumar.

His contract then was till the end of the Olympics, postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The veteran coach first arrived in India in 2005 to take charge of 10,000m runners Preeja Sreedharan and Kavita Raut.

He guided the duo to a 1-2 finish in the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou. It was the first time that Indian women won medals in the 25-lap race.

Sudha Singh, who won gold in the 2010 Asian Games, was also under his charge.

Later that year, he suggested Lalita Babar to shift to steeplechase.

And thanks to his sustained efforts, Babar became the first Indian athlete to reach a track event final in the Olympic Games since PT Usha in 1984 when she made it to the steeplechase final in 2016 Rio Olympics.

“We are stunned … he returned to India only a few days ago (landed in Bengaluru on March 2 and then reached Patiala next day), having agreed to train steeplechaser Avinash Sable for the Olympic Games,” Sumariwalla said.

“He was a hard-taskmaster and one who developed his own training routines for his athletes. He was highly respected in the international circles and we were privileged that he shared a wonderful relationship with India,” he said.

Sumariwalla also lauded Snesarev for imposing a ‘blanket ban’ on all kinds of drugs.

“As someone who believed in research, he showed us the way with his pioneering efforts towards improving the endurance and speed of his athletes.”

“He insisted that athletes never touch any medicines while training with him, imposing a blanket ban on all kinds of medication, even prescribed ones,” Sumariwalla recalled.