By Betsy Powell Courts Reporter

Two teens sat in the prisoner’s box wearing blank expressions as they watched chilling videos of themselves carrying out a series of brazen contract shootings two years ago — a stark illustration of recent warnings that young hired guns are behind cycles of bloodshed in the Toronto area.

Prosecutors played the videos on Wednesday at the downtown Toronto courthouse during the sentencing hearing of R.R. and K.A., two teens who pleaded guilty earlier this month to multiple counts of reckless discharge of a firearm and accessory after the fact to reckless discharge of a firearm. The hearing took place at the same time a funeral was underway for Toronto police Const. Marc Pinizzotto, 43, allegedly shot to death by a 19-year-old working for a gun-for-hire network.

The Crown attorneys are urging the judge to impose the agreed‑upon three‑year youth sentence — the maximum under the Youth Criminal Justice Act — without credit for the time the teens have already spent in pre‑trial custody.

If the judge accepts that position, their custody terms would begin only once Superior Court Justice Maureen Forestell delivers her sentence on July 13.

The teens cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Over two days in late June 2024, the pair along with A.P. — another teen — drove around Scarborough and Richmond Hill in stolen vehicles. While R.R. did not discharge a weapon, he “abetted,” encouraged and recorded his gun-toting companions opening fire on various “targets” — cinemas, autobody shops, a towing company, a takeout restaurant, an elementary school and a cannabis dispensary — Crown attorney Sharna Reid told the judge.

No one was injured, though surveillance camera footage and cellphone videos show some near misses, such as a daylight burst of gunfire discharged outside a cinema with patrons nearby.

“It’s really just by luck not design,” that people weren’t injured or killed, Reid said.

That changed on July 6, 2024 when A.P., then 16, fatally shot 28-year-old Sulakshan Selvasingam in a gas station on instructions from “influential adults” to shoot the tow truck driver and record his murder.

Footage played in court Wednesday showed just how “nonchalant” A.P. and K.A. were as they repeated instructions to shoot Selvasingam in the head, and discussed the possibility of earning a bonus if they provided video proof, Reid said.

Defence lawyer Savreet Chuckal, representing R.R., disagreed with the prosecutor’s characterization. She described them as “young people who are not mature,” and asked the judge to consider that her client did not fire a gun, and that “events would have occurred without his participation.”

Reid, however, told the Forestell the pair were “working together,” and “should be held equally guilty.”

‘I go to bed hearing them cry from their rooms’

During Wednesday’s hearing, Selvasingam’s sister sobbed as she read a victim impact statement describing her brother as the caretaker of their immigrant family who came to Canada with nothing after fleeing civil war in Sri Lanka. “Everything he did was to repay my parents for the sacrifices they made for us,” she said, her mother and father sitting in the body of the court.

Her father, despite health issues, has had to continue working, she said. “Sulakshan made sure he took care of my brother who has a disability as well. It hurts me to see my parents cry everyday. I go to bed hearing them cry from their rooms.”

Chuckal, along with defence lawyer Craig Bottomley, who represents K.A., argued that failing to grant their clients credit for the time spent in custody would undermine the spirit of the YCJA, which is to rehabilitate young people and promote their successful reintegration into society.

Both lawyers stressed the young age of their clients at the time of the offences, the fact that neither had a prior youth record, and the family support documented in numerous letters filed with the court. K.A. was just 14 at the time of the shootings.

Two days of “very bad” behaviour, is not months and months of criminality, Bottomley told the judge.

The Crown had initially intended to seek adult life sentences for the teens. But prosecutors abandoned that plan after two 2025 Supreme Court of Canada rulings sharply limited when youth can be sentenced as adults. Those decisions reaffirmed the YCJA’s presumption that young offenders should be dealt with under the youth regime except in the most exceptional circumstances, and they raised the legal threshold for imposing adult penalties.

As a result, A.P. will be sentenced as a youth, where the maximum for first‑degree murder is a blended 10‑year term of custody and community supervision.

The identities of the youths are protected under the YCJA.

https://archive.ph/gIeRC