A woman who knew 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes when he was younger was coming home from work Saturday night when she found the teen with stab wounds at a Toronto subway station and tried to save his life.
Global News briefly spoke to Mina on Friday morning outside of Keele Station, where the fatal stabbing happened on Saturday. Police have said it was an unprovoked attack.
Mina said she knew the family and used to get their kids together for play dates when they were younger.
“I walked them home when they (were) so much younger. And I found him like that that night on the ground,” she said.
Mina said she was coming home from work when she found Gabriel with injuries and did what she could to help him.
“I helped with another retired ER nurse, I think, and I gave him CPR that night,” she said.
“Then, Monday I learned that was our Gabriel. He grew up so much I didn’t even recognize him and that’s how he ended up dying. He should have never died that way,” she said through tears.
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“He was such a good boy. Such a gentle good boy. It breaks my heart.”
“Poor Andrea,” Mina said, referring to Gabriel’s mother Andrea Magalhaes.
In an interview with Global News earlier this week, Andrea said that one of the parents she knew from a previous school Gabriel attended was passing by after the stabbing occurred.
“She said she was passing by and she performed CPR on him and somebody got the defibrillator,” Andrea said.
“And I think by that time he was bleeding out because … they couldn’t even shock him. I think there was no blood to circulate. The damage was done.”
Facing mounting pressure to reduce the spike in violent crime on Toronto’s transit system, the TTC has said it will be spending some of its reserve funds to help extend security measures and social assistance programming.
Global News asked Mina if she felt more funding may help make the TTC safer.
“I have very little faith left in the system,” she said.
On Thursday evening, Gabriel’s family led hundreds of people in a candlelight walk in downtown Toronto to remember and honour the boy.
Andrea carried a bouquet of white flowers, a candle and held her husband’s hand as they walked with hundreds of Torontonians from the High Park north gates along Bloor Street to Keele subway station.
Meanwhile, court documents obtained by Global News show the 22-year-old man accused of fatally stabbing Gabriel has a lengthy criminal background, including two convictions for assault with a weapon.
Jordan O’Brien-Tobin remains in custody and is scheduled to appear in court on April 21.
— With files from Matthew Bingley, Catherine McDonald and The Canadian Press
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