The shooting last night on Scarborough’s Danzig Street has left the city searching for answers, and immediately following the public violence, there are few.[briefbreak]
That’s largely because of police procedure, rules around crime reporting, the need for accuracy.
On social media, however, there are different rules. And when questions are unanswered, there is almost always an effort to answer them.
On Reddit, a social news site, the Toronto forum was buzzing this morning as one user put together a sketch of Monday night’s violence together just using tweets. (Cut, pasted and slightly abridged below.)
BitchslappedByLogic, an obvious avatar, went through Twitter to identify the victim, aspects of the shooting, the potential fallout and what might happen next. The results are startling.
These are a collection of 140-character messages, and very clearly not proven in any way whatsoever. Take this account of the events with extreme skepticism. The author puts that disclaimer right on the post: “this is a portrait of the event formed solely by linking from things found on Twitter. None of this is concrete evidence of anything’s having happened or anyone’s involvement in the shootings.”
But, at the same time, don’t discount this investigation just because these are messages on social media. There is no reason to believe any of it is intentionally fabricated.
Calls to the Toronto Police department on this specific post went unanswered. We’ll update if and when the police weigh in.
Random portraits of the situation gleaned from twitter.
Apparently, it was this guy’s party, as he says here. He’d been planning this party since July 7th. The pictures indicate that a ‘hennesey party’ is exactly what it sounds like: a party w/ lots of hennesey liquor provided.
This guy apparently anticipated that problems might happen at the party. This girl, too. This guy too. So this could be the result of a pretty well-known beef.
This person was shot. As was this person. This person was also shot — twice. This person was also shot, according to this tweet. This may be her in recovery, though I can’t be sure. It is, in any case, someone recovering from a gunshot wound.
This woman was shot and apparently killed. Her and her boyfriend were celebrating a 4 month anniversary. I’m confident enough to say that she is the Shyanne who many locals on twitter are talking about, based on comparing pictures from her account to those posted by others. She was apparently well-connected. One tweeter said that “This is Shyanne’s people we’re talking about. Now it’s gonna be war.” Here is a memorial collage that is making the rounds. Here is another memorial picture tweeted by someone.
This guy says that bullets grazed his head, and that “niggas” weren’t even aiming. Implies more than one shooter, I guess.
This guy is implying that there will be more violence in the future. The shooters “touched the wrong people“. “This isn’t over“. More of the same sentiment from this girl. And this woman, who says “there is gonna be war”. We should expect an “outrageous reaction“, because there will be a “heavy domino effect“. As another guy says, “Mandem aren’t gonna let this slide easy.” (‘Mandem’ = slang term for a collection of thugs.)
I fear for this community’s future.
