Victim’s family renews appeal to find killers years after fatal Toronto mall shooting

Althea McDonald works in a restaurant and often wonders if she’s crossed paths with the four suspects wanted for killing her son, Jovane Clarke. When she sees a story on the news about a gun seizure, she wonders if the firearm used in her son’s murder has been recovered.

“Every time I see a story like that, I’m always waiting for my phone to ring. I’m like, I hope they find the gun that killed my son,” said McDonald, who is upset knowing her son’s killers are still roaming the streets.

“They get to go out and enjoy their lives while us, waiting for answers. Sometimes can’t even get a good night’s sleep,” she told Global News on the eve of the seven-year anniversary of her son’s murder.

On Aug. 31, 2017, Clarke, who was 22, drove from his home on Tandridge Crescent to North York Sheridan Mall to get some income tax documents from an accountant. After leaving the mall, Clarke planned to pick up his girlfriend before returning back to the townhome, where he was going to sit down and look at post-secondary programs online with his mother. Clarke had not decided what program to register for and was seeking his mother’s advice.

Around 5:30 p.m., as he was leaving the mall, police say four suspects who got out of a car ambushed him and opened fire in the busy parking lot. Two pursued Clarke as he ran back into the mall for cover and one followed him in before Clarke tripped and fell to the ground.

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“The one suspect that followed him in stood over top of him and shot him multiple times,” Det. Julia Hung from the Toronto police homicide squad told Global News. It’s there that Clarke was pronounced dead.

Hung said video surveillance later showed the suspect vehicle had been waiting outside Clarke’s home on Tandridge Crescent for about one hour before he left and the suspects followed him to the shopping mall.

Clarke was targeted but investigators still cannot say why.

“He wasn’t living a high-risk lifestyle,” Hung said. “There was nothing as to why Jovane may have been targeted and it’s still something we’re looking at trying to determine.”

At the time of the murder, the officer in charge of the case described the shooting as “an overkill.”

Investigators are still trying to identify the suspects, who were described at the time as males in their mid-20s wearing dark clothing who were driving a dark four-door vehicle.

McDonald will spend the seventh anniversary of her son’s murder at the cemetery where she’s gone since 2017.

“We want justice for Jovane. We want someone to come forward. It’s been long enough now,” McDonald said.