Slain teacher mourned at school gathering

By Chris Doucette
Thursday, July 10, 2014

TORONTO - Grief-stricken students, parents, faculty and friends of Abshir Hassan comforted each other at Lawrence Heights Middle School Wednesday as they tried to come to grips with the much-loved supply teacher’s senseless killing.

About 150 people — many of them current and former students — turned up to remember the 31-year-old, who was gunned down a day earlier in a triple shooting outside his home a block from the school.

“People just started flocking to the school,” Toronto District School Board spokesman Sherri Schwartz Maltz said at Lawrence Heights of the impromptu gathering. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

She said the mood inside was “sombre” and many people were crying as they shared stories about Hassan.

Hassan began working at the middle school four years ago in the after-school program Beyond 3:30, and was later hired on as an occasional teacher, filling in several days a week and often teaching at other area schools as well.

Hassan was just outside his lowrise apartment building on Flemington Rd., near Lawrence Ave. W. and Allen Rd., when two men walked up and opened fire for no known reason around 12:15 a.m. Tuesday.

A man, 22, and his girlfriend, 18, survived the shooting. But Hassan, who was hit multiple times, died hours later.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Cyrika Gunn, a former Lawrence Heights student, said of the news. “I still can’t believe it now.”

Like many others, the 16-year-old said Hassan was a kind person who helped everyone.

“He was one of the greatest (people) I’ve ever met,” Gunn said.

Waheema Asghar, 31, met Hassan in middle school soon after his family moved to Canada from Somalia and they also attended York University together.

“He’s been an incredible friend of mine forever,” she said.

Asghar’s mom died recently and Hassan texted his friend a heartfelt quote Monday that turned out to be their last communication.

“Love leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal,” the text message said.

“It just seems so fitting, him telling me to remember this about my mother and now here I am remembering this about him,” Asghar said.

She said Hassan grew up in Lawrence Heights surrounded by the sort of violence that killed him and he knew education was “the way out,” so he routinely passed that message on to kids.

“There are so many people that he moved,” Asghar said.

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