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Ontario’s highest court has allowed a teenage boy to claim self-defence in the shooting death of a man who was running away from him.
The teenager, who cannot be identified, had been carrying a gun for his protection because he had been shot at twice, including once from a car, by someone who called out his name. He feared for his life.
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s 3-0 ruling acquitting him on Tuesday “reinforces the notion that we really do have to be careful about how we assess extremely stressful and quick-moving events,” the teenager’s lawyer, Gary Grill, said in an interview.
A spokesman for the Ontario Attorney-General’s Ministry would not say whether it intends to appeal.
The killing in the spring of 2012 sheds light on gun violence that has occurred with increasing frequency over the past several years in Toronto.
Seventeen at the time — but with an undiagnosed cognitive disability that gave him the reasoning abilities of a 10-year-old — the teenager was attacked by five people, including two members of a gang known as the Gators, in his apartment lobby in the neighbourhood of Jane Street and Woolner Avenue just before 10 p.m. One attacker struck him over the head from behind with a baseball bat, knocking him to the floor and causing his gun to fall out of his pocket.
The teenager picked up the gun and, as the five attackers began to run, he fired four shots in five seconds. A bullet struck Jaivoan Cromwell, the man who had hit him with the bat, in the back, killing him, and grazed and injured another man.
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