TORONTO — A vigil is set to be held Thursday night for the 16-year-old boy killed in an apparently unprovoked attack at a Toronto subway station.
A candlelight walk to honour Gabriel Magalhaes is slated to go from the High Park gates along Bloor Street to Keele subway station, where the teen was stabbed on Saturday night.
The vigil is said to be organized by Magalhaes’s former classmates from Keele Street Public School and their families, who have described the 16-year-old in social media posts as a lovely friend, student and neighbour who touched many lives.
The teen’s mother has called in media interviews for more mental health and social supports to be introduced to tackle the root causes of violence.
Premier Doug Ford reiterated Thursday he wanted to see more police patrolling Toronto’s transit system.
Asked whether the city could use provincial funds earmarked for guns and gangs to assign more officers to the Toronto Transit Commission, Ford said it would be up to the Toronto police board.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before — all these tragedies happening, but it has to stop,” the premier said, speaking at an unrelated press conference in Hamilton on Thursday.
“The way it stops and the way you pick up ridership is by making sure we have a safe transit system in Toronto and the way we have a safe transit system is our Toronto police working with our transit police and boots on the ground.”
Toronto police put more than 80 officers working overtime on patrol in the TTC in late January in response to a spate of violence in the system, but ended those shifts two weeks ago. Police said they were returning to deploying on-duty officers on the TTC for regular, proactive patrols.
Police arrested and charged 22-year-old Jordan O’Brien-Tobin, of no fixed address, with first-degree murder in Magalhaes’s death.
Court documents in Newfoundland and Labrador indicate a man with the same name and date of birth was wanted on an outstanding warrant for breaching probation conditions and had several criminal convictions in that province as well as Ontario. The documents said O’Brien-Tobin’s last known address was in east Toronto.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 30, 2023.
