‘Good-hearted’ men were devoted fathers ‘not gangsters’: friends

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The driver of an SUV carrying three young men who were murdered early Sunday morning navigated through a hail of gunfire and shattered glass during a high-speed ambush.

During heavy rainfall, a black SUV descended on the gold-coloured Nissan Pathfinder on the westbound Gardiner off-ramp at Brown’s Line, preventing the driver from seeing the shooters, police said.

Terrified, the man navigated his SUV onto side streets, before abandoning it on quiet, leafy Lunness Road in the Brown’s Line-Horner Avenue area.

“(The driver) didn’t even know they were dead until he got around the corner,” said a close friend, 28, yesterday, who wouldn’t give his name. “This car ambushed them. Nobody knows where they’re from, who they are. The driver didn’t know what to do.”

Afraid for his life, the driver fled on foot, leaving his dying friends behind in the SUV, police said.

The drive-by shooting killed Adrian Bannerman, 29, Aaron MacDonald, 20 and Kurt Charles, 27, all of whom lived on Capri Road off The East Mall south of Rathburn Road.

Investigators searched the stretch of Brown’s Line just past the Evans Avenue overpass, but found no evidence of spent shell casings or broken glass, homicide Det.-Sgt. Dean Burks told reporters at a news conference Monday afternoon.

Police are currently examining another unnamed scene, Burks said.

Investigators determined the surviving driver is not the man who called 9-1-1 around 3:40 a.m. Sunday; they’re appealing for the man who made the emergency cellphone call to come forward.

The caller directed police to the SUV parked on Lunness Road, detectives said.

Burks said the friends had all been at Fluid Nightclub on Richmond Street West from late Saturday night until early Sunday morning.

Police believe the suspects were also at the club. But there was no altercation, both police and friends of the dead men said.

Yesterday afternoon, friends of the four men talked about them outside the building where they lived.

The four were known to police. But friends say none were gang members.

“These guys weren’t gang members,” said one man, 20, who refused to give him name, but said Bannerman treated him like a younger brother. “These guys were fathers who loved their kids, spent time with their kids every day. They were good-hearted people.”

Charles had two children, aged five and one.

Bannerman, who has a two-year-old son, worked in construction, and had gotten many young men in the neighbourhood into the union, he said.

“We called him, ‘Urban Jesus,’” the man said of Bannerman. “The man had a good heart. Because of him we have a community centre. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a major loss to all of us.”

Bannerman organized the building’s annual barbecue and basketball tourney, and led community projects, the man said. Recently, Bannerman bought a pregnant woman in his building an air-conditioner.

Bannerman was one of two men in the building who acted as role models, he said.

The other, 28, wouldn’t give his name, but said he too encourages youth.

“I don’t want these guys on the streets doing nothing,” he said of the neighbourhood’s youth. “These guys (men killed) were not gangsters. We don’t walk with guns. I was there four years ago. I was shot in the face. But I’m still here. I survived.”