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Benefit concert for slain friends  25-year-olds were gunned down in parked car
By DON PEAT, SUN MEDIA Less than three blocks from where they died, friends of Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin will gather tonight to honour their lives. More than a tribute, the L.O.V.E. Lockdown is the first of a memorial project that hopes to fight back against the violence that claimed the two 25-year-olds. Martin and Ellis were gunned down in June as they sat in a parked SUV in front of a friend's place on Richmond St. W., west of Bathurst St. Despite a $50,000 reward and an emotional plea from the victims' mothers in September, the double-murder of Ellis and Martin remains unsolved. Almost six months later, the friends of the two men have organized a benefit concert and photo exhibit in memory of Ellis and Martin at Tattoo Rock Parlour on Queen St. W. "A lot of us felt we needed to do something to give back to the city cause the boys loved Toronto," said friend and event co-organizer Talia Soberano. "Anger isn't going to get us anywhere and we want to be proactive and we just want ... to do our part to give back." In the wake of the deaths, friend Kathleen Ryan founded D.O. It! -- the organizational force behind tonight's event -- to raise money for youth violence prevention groups. "The D and the O stand for Dylan and Oliver," Ryan told the Sun yesterday. She said the events will bring people together through events based around music, photography, life, love, peace and positivity. All proceeds will go to the Toronto-based projects of Leave Out Violence (LOVE). The Canadian not-for-profit organization works through educational programs designed to help youth break the cycle of violence. The main level of Tattoo Rock Parlour will feature a live performance by Blues in D -- Ellis' former band that includes his brother Cody. |
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 “Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is. Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss? Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peacetrain, oh peacetrain take this country, take me home again” -Cat Stevens
Upon first hearing of the tragic and violent events of June 13th 2008, I became frozen in shock and disbelief. Standing within the walls of a room I had called my bedroom for over 13 years, I found myself completely lost. Everything that was once familiar instantly became foreign; I was petrified. All I wanted to be able to do was to hop a ride on that peacetrain, and find my way home again. For me, and many other friends of Dylan and Oliver, home for that first week became the Ellis’ house. As the news spread across the city, country and world on that fateful morning, you could watch as more and more people gathered on the front lawn of their house, the place where we could find peace in wake of such violence; it became home to all of us. As painful as those initial days were, it was impossible not to recognize the sheer beauty of seeing everyone come together from all corners of the world, and do nothing but love one another. Any frivolous indifferences or disagreements from the past became irrelevant, our vulnerable hearts were exposed, and all we could do was be there for one another. Friends that had allowed their life paths to guide them away from Toronto were instantly brought back home, people from the past who had become strangers were friends once again, and anyone who was a friend of the boys, became friends of one another. We all became family.
After the sun had gone down, bottles of Jack started to circulate the driveway and with our arms wrapped around one another, the guitars came out and in harmony, it was the music that allowed us to be at peace.
I have taken a lot from this experience, but the most evident and certainly the most valuable thing I have learned, is the importance of love. This group of friends is unique not only in its size, but in our ability and willingness to unconditionally love one another. Dyl and Oliver were two of the most fun-loving people in the world; I am certain they taught each and every one of us who knew them how to enjoy life as much as possible, by loving who you are, and the people that surround you.
While romance expresses love between lovers, it is laughter that truly shows the love amongst friends. There isn’t a memory I have with Dylan and Oliver that doesn’t involve a lot of laughing. Laughter allows us to let our guards down and be at ease. It is through continually loving and laughing that we can truly honor these boys.
For those who knew Dylan and Oliver, I know we will never stop remembering and honoring them for the exceptional men they were, but we must be sure to not allow ourselves to forget how to love and laugh like they did.
We must all stop waiting for a tragedy in order to learn how important love and friendship is. For those who didn’t have the privilege of knowing these boys, learn from them and take the time to reach out to friends you have let slip away, if only to share a laugh. For it is only through constant laughter, love and friendship, that we can all truly be at peace.
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Peace dot Love Festival. Save the date : JUNE 18th 2009 at Toronto KOOLHAUS. For more information :
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 Violent crime is migrating downtown, and innocent bystanders are getting caught in the crossfire. The most alarming thing is our slow but certain acclimatization to it all. How Toronto learned to live with the gun. John O’Keefe spent the last minutes of January 11, 2008, sharing a beer with half a dozen friends at the Duke of Gloucester. Two blocks south of Bloor on Yonge Street, the Duke was O’Keefe’s island of familiarity in the bustling anonymity of downtown. A 42-year-old manager of Healthy’s, a vitamin store in the Exchange Tower, he had met a group of friends for an after-work drink. At about 1 a.m., despite calls from his friends and the bartender to have one for the road, O’Keefe left the pub and headed up Yonge toward the subway. He lived on the Danforth with his partner, Susan Banahan, and his plan was to take his son Iain skating the next morning. As he made his way up the street, two young men—a 22-year-old student named Edward Paredes and his 23-year-old friend, Awet Zekarias—were being forced out of the Brass Rail, a block north. There were a dozen or so people milling about in front of the strip club at the time. They saw the pair scuffle with the bouncer and claim Zekarias egged his buddy on. Paredes allegedly pulled from his waistband a registered Baby Desert Eagle 9 mm—a small-format version of an Israeli-made semi-automatic handgun, which he often took to a shooting range in Scarborough. O’Keefe, bundled up against the cold and listening to his iPod, was walking by just as Paredes fired. The bullet hit him in the head, killing him instantly. Paredes and Zekarias fled down Charles Street. Later that day, they were caught and charged with first-degree murder. O’Keefe’s death was only one of a handful of high-profile shootings in the first half of this year. Another happened on January 17, the afternoon of O’Keefe’s funeral, when Hou Chang Mao, a 47‑year-old grocer, was caught in a gunfight while stacking oranges in front of a Chinatown East supermarket. Then, on the evening of March 28, an 18-year-old woman was shot in the leg on a subway car pulling into Spadina station—the first shooting to take place on a TTC train. In June, 25-year-olds Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin, heading home from watching a basketball game at a friend’s apartment, were gunned down in their Range Rover near Trinity-Bellwoods Park. At press time, the police had arrested two men in connection with the subway shooting, but there had been no breaks in the murders of Mao, Ellis and Martin. By John Lorinc TORONTO LIFE - August 2008 |
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 The woman, 22, who was in the back of an SUV when Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin were shot dead, insists her friends did nothing to provoke the attack.
She saw Martin and Ellis. They were motionless. She was hysterical.
Aug 13, 2008 04:30 AM
Michele Henry
Crime Reporter It happened in a split second. From her perch in the back, she could barely register that the SUV had stopped moving, let alone that a gunman had opened fire.
"Get down," Oliver Martin said calmly from the passenger's seat, craning his head in her direction. He shifted in his seat belt to dodge bullets. "Get down," he said. |
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