Toronto man sentenced in murder of security officer
Toronto Canada December 25, 2021
‘I’ll be broken forever’: Toronto security guard remembered at sentencing for pot dispensary shooting
“He made me feel like I was born to be great, that I could do whatever I wanted to do in this life,” victim Dwayne McMillan’s sister said.
“As long as I’m around no one will ever hurt you,” Dwayne McMillan, 44, would tell his little sister Krysta Cooke. He encouraged her dreams of being a star soccer player — just as he proudly cheered on his football-player sons.
“He made me feel like I was born to be great, that I could do whatever I wanted to do in this life,” she said.
But on the night of Oct. 2, 2018, McMillan’s family and friends were robbed of that joyful, unwavering support when four people — two armed with a handgun and rifle — tried to rob a marijuana dispensary in North York, near Keele Street and Steeles Avenue, where McMillan worked as a security guard.
As the four individuals struggled with McMillan, the person with the handgun shot him in the chest, killing him. During the fight, Jahnoye Carpenter, 19 at the time, pointed a rifle directly at McMillan before fleeing after the gunshot. Only Carpenter and another of the robbers, a teen under the age of 18 who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, were caught — the shooter remains at large.
On Wednesday, Carpenter was sentenced to 10 years in prison for manslaughter. Carpenter had been charged with second-degree murder and arson, for setting fire to the 2011 Ford Taurus used in the robbery the next day but entered a plea to manslaughter last month. After being credited for three years spent in pretrial custody, and 602 days spent in full or partial lockdown, Carpenter has four years and five months left to serve.
“I think I’ll be broken forever. Since he died I can’t sleep, I have panic attacks, I cry all the time,” Cooke said in her victim impact statement. “And it’s all because neither my brain nor my heart can provide a good enough reason for why he is dead so I can move on.”
In his decision, Superior Court Justice John McMahon said it was exceptionally aggravating that, after McMillan was shot, the group immediately fled.
They were “more worried about being caught, and in a cold and cowardly fashion left the victim to die alone on the pavement of the parking lot,” McMahon said. He also noted that while Carpenter expressed remorse, he has not identified the two remaining suspects. Carpenter also destroyed evidence by burning the car, which he admitted to doing in the agreed statement of facts. A “machine gun” was also found in the home he was living in, though he has not said it belonged to him.
Carpenter was arrested within a few weeks of the fatal shooting.
Before he was sentenced, Carpenter apologized to McMillan’s family but maintained he was not a killer since he was not the one who pulled the trigger that night.
McMahon corrected him in the sentencing decision. Carpenter was armed, had his face concealed and, by his plea, has admitted to participating in the unlawful killing of McMillan, he said.
The killing is another example of senseless gun violence in the community that must be stopped, McMahon said in his decision.
“A gun does not give a second chance,” he said.
In their victim impact statements, McMillan’s friends and family shared memories of a warm, funny, patient and kind man who grew up in Scarborough, tirelessly looked after the people he loved and doted on his grandchildren.
After McMillan was killed, his sister became a social worker so she can work with young people on a trajectory like Carpenter’s. So that “these stories we hear of gun violence, especially in the Black community, at least have a chance to happen less frequently,” she said.
Like her mother, she has chosen to forgive Carpenter and the others responsible for her brother’s death despite the grief that her family will always have.
“I can’t carry this pain forever and I have to choose to forgive because that is what he would have wanted,” she said. “I will be choosing to make sure my brother’s death is meaningful.”
She hopes Carpenter makes the same choice
