Family and friends gathered at a barbecue in a Brampton park on Sunday to remember the lives of two Black men shot dead by Peel Regional Police this year.
A few dozen people huddled under tents to hide from the afternoon sun that beat down as kids played in a nearby splash pad and a cricket game got underway in otherwise barren sports fields.
The event was held to honour D’Andre Campbell and Jamal Francique, who were shot and killed by police in separate incidents this year.
The Campbells said 26-year-old D’Andre called 911 on himself on April 6, but they do not know why. He lived with schizophrenia, and the family says he was not a danger to anyone that day.
“It was terrifying… and we’re all going through a tragic movement right now. The way my son was taken away from me, it was very difficult — so we need justice,” Yvonne Campbell, D’Andre Campbell’s mother, said.
Francique’s family said the 28-year-old lived with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and was unarmed when he was shot in the back of the head on Jan. 7.
“We demand, we demand, that the police officer that killed my son and the police officers that were a part of it, we demand they get picked up and put in jail right now,” Derek Francique, Jamal Francique’s father, said.
“It damaged us, it damaged our whole entire family — he was taken away way, way, way too soon and we want justice for him.”
The SIU said police were planning to arrest Francique when the shooting occurred.
Peter Korchinski, the father of Regis Korchinski-Paquet — a 29-year-old woman who fell from her 24th-floor High Park-area apartment after Toronto police were called to respond to a domestic disturbance, attended to rally as he grieves the loss of his daughter.
“Accountability has to be there, the transparency. We don’t have the officers’ names, we don’t have their badge numbers,” he said, adding his daughter was a “joyous and optimistic person.”
“She would never jump for 24 floors ever.”
The province’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, continue to examine all three deaths.
— With files from Kamil Karamali and Nick Westoll