Why the spike in gun violence among youth is no surprise to the people trying to help them

It's an attack that has left a school, community and a city shaken — the fatal shooting of Grade 12 student Jahiem Robinson in what police described as an "execution" inside his school.

The accused is a 14 year old who police can't name under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

It's not the first killing in recent months involving young people. Earlier this week, Toronto police said ​​one third of homicides in the first two months of this year involved victims or accused under the age of 20. Police said the average age of those linked to gun violence last year was 20, down from 25 in previous years.

"The kids are getting younger and we have never seen before this.  This is not normal," said Sureya Ibrahim, founder of Mothers of Peace, a group that helps mothers who have lost children to gun violence.

Ibrahim and others who work with vulnerable youth say as horrific and tragic as every homicide is, they're not surprised by the escalation in youth violence. They say a combination of the pandemic, a lack of mental health supports and other systemic issues have taken a toll on the community and more needs to be done.

"I think in the community, we were unfortunately anticipating this," said Zohra Rahman. 

She's the director at Youthlink, a children's mental health agency in Scarborough. The centre offers various programs and supports for vulnerable youth.

"Poor mental health and the lack of support and being in a lockdown for so long ... it was going to have a trickle effect leading to violence."

Rahman said a lot of their in-person outreach was replaced with virtual programming, which is hardly the same.

"We know some of the really hard to reach youth. They're not going to connect virtually."

That pattern isn't specific to Scarborough. Abdulkadir Nur works as a provincial outreach officer for the Jane-Finch Centre helping youth make the right choices with education, employment and other issues.

"A lot of the programming that we did have available ... pre-COVID definitely helped youth out a lot. It  gave them somewhere to be after school, that gave them somewhere to be on the weekends," said Nur.

"I kind of feel like [the pandemic] has taken a huge toll because if they're not able to have those experiences here where they used to have them ... they may search for them elsewhere."

Nur said one of the biggest issues right now is a lack of mental health supports for young racialized men.