The Nirmalendran brothers: a Metro Morning series
CBC News | Posted: September 9, 2015 8:42 PM | Last Updated: September 14, 2015
Metro Morning's week-long series on a troubled Regent Park family
A spike in gun violence this summer caught authorities by surprise — it was the biggest rise in Toronto's gun violence since 2012.
Metro Morning's Mary Wiens is exploring circumstances around one of those shootings in the series,The Nirmalendran Brothers: A Story of Love, Fear and Violence.
- How the Nirmalendran family became engulfed in tragedy
- A friend recalls a turning point in Nixon Nirmalendran's short life
- A week before the shootings, Nixon Nirmalendran talked about going back to school
- Christopher Husbands' path to violence: a teacher's perspective
The Nirmalendran brothers came to Canada as young boys. They grew up in Regent Park, part of a wave of Sri Lankan immigrants in the mid-1990s.
Two of those brothers would be dead before they were 23. Nixon, the eldest, was killed in the Eaton's Centre shooting in 2012. Nisan, the middle brother, was shot in a Regent Park stairwell less than a year later.
In August, 2015, the third and only living brother was arrested. Nirusan Nirmalendran has been charged in connection with a spray of bullets fired from a passing car.
This series explores how the three brothers got caught up in gun violence from such a young age.