Tired of losing a growing number of young men to homicide, some families in Edmonton's Somali community have opted to pack their bags and are migrating to the Toronto area.
For the fourth time this year, Edmonton's Somali-Canadian community buried a homicide victim, after 25-year-old Ahmed Ismail-Sheikh died after an altercation early Friday morning in the city's Inglewood neighbourhood. The victim had travelled to Edmonton two years ago to find work, and had no immediate family in the city expect for a brother and cousin. The victim's mother and father flew to Edmonton from Toronto over the weekend for their son's funeral.
"Every month we're back here for a funeral," said Mohamed Abdirahman, who didn't know Ismail-Sheikh, but like many others, attended the funeral because he was a member of the city's Somali-Canadian community. "It's like a killing field. It's a lot of funerals."
Abdirahman said many families in the community have begun to move to the Toronto area because they are worried for the safety of their teenage children.
"Every month there are people going back to Toronto. People came here with their kids to find a better life, and this happens. People ask themselves, 'What if the next time it's my kids?' " he said. "Something has to be done. Someone out there knows something."
Paramedics were called to the scene around 1:40 a.m. Friday, where they found Ismail-Sheikh unconscious. He was taken to hospital, where he later died. The cause of death has not been released.
Police ruled his death a homicide on Sunday, but did not release any further details about the investigation. He was the fourth Somali-Canadian man to be killed in Edmonton this year.
Mourners packed the Al Rashid Mosque on the city's north side Monday afternoon for Ismail-Sheikh's funeral.
Local Somali-Canadian community and spiritual leaders helped with Ismail-Sheikh's funeral arrangements, as they do when any member of the community dies.
"The community always stands by their members and help their families with funeral arrangements," said Mohamed Abdi, program co-ordinator for the Somali-Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton.
The latest killing has the community, which numbers between 10,000 and 15,000, on edge, he added.
"It's getting scarier now. There's too much trouble in town now," he said. "Everyone has to turn up to work on minimizing or eradicating these crimes. We're all worried. It's not only the Somali community."
Ahmed Hussen, national president of the Canadian Somali Congress, said the perception among Somali families in the Toronto area is that Alberta isn't a safe place for young men.
"I've been with mothers in different situations and they've been making phone calls and saying, 'Maybe you should come back to Toronto.'
The perception is only limited to young males. No one is worried about the older guys or the young women," Hussen explained. "They're fixated on the young men. The perception has set in for the community that Alberta is not safe for young Canadian-Somali males. Each killing just reinforces that. This year hasn't been a good year."
The homicide rates of Somali-Canadians in Toronto, where the community population is about 80,000, is much lower than in Edmonton, Hussen said.
"It tends to be young men who left their parents in Ontario, telling them, 'I'm going to get a job in booming Alberta.' So you have young men with no parental supervision and the community isn't really connected to them," he explained. "In Toronto . . . the only reason people are connected is because their families are there. So it's harder for the person to get into a situation where they're untethered from their family."
Edmonton's chief of police, Rod Knecht, and Mayor Stephen Mandel met last week to discuss Edmonton's high homicide rate for the year and spent some time focusing on the city's Somali community.
"We talked about ways in which we might try to get in front of the problem, but the issue was there doesn't seem to be any trend. But maybe in the Somali community there might be more trends than (in) others," Mandel said.
He said to address the disproportionately high number of homicides within the Somali community, city police need to define in a clear way the specific issues the community is facing.
"The reality is we're always concerned when any community is represented in four homicides and want to find out what's going on in that community that is creating a more violent atmosphere," he said, adding he asked police for background information on the three previous homicides.
The mayor hinted at forthcoming initiatives, but didn't elaborate on what those might look like.
"We think we are going to be putting into place some interesting things out of our office in co-operation with the (police) chief's office. This is very disconcerting for all of us to see this happen in one particular community. We need to take some proactive steps but we need to get a bit more background information on what's happened."
Ismail-Sheikh's death was the city's 29th homicide of 2011.
Source: The Edmonton Journal
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