Life Without Toyosi

In the face of tragedy, even something as unthinkable as the murder of a promising young teenager, there is a necessary pattern. It runs from grief, through mourning, and finally to acceptance. But it does not happen automatically. Along the way, where a loved one or a friend has been slain brutally, it is possible for anger to take over and if it does, then there is no knowing where it might take you. And so it becomes doubly important for people to come closer together, and to help one another to cope and to keep anger at bay.

It is over two weeks since the fifteen year old Toyosi Shittabey was killed in a knife attack, close to his home in Tyrrellstown, in North Dublin. A third year student at Hartstown Community School, and a resident in Tyrrellstown for eleven years, he was walking home with friends on Good Friday when two men apparently started an altercation with the boys, resulting in Toyosi being stabbed to death. Toyosi was Nigerian. The two men who attacked him are white. Inevitably, it was widely seen as a racist attack.
The shocking events made headline news. Students at Hartstown Community School and residents of the nearby neighbourhood, Tyrrelstown, were plunged into the maelstrom of media scrutiny, with the question of racism at the forefront of most major news coverage.
It’s understandable that this story has hit Ireland hard. If the violence of the crime was shocking, the age of the victim made it even moreso. Men have been arrested and charged. One of them is in his thirties, emphasising even more the vulnerability of a teenager like Toyosi. It is impossible to avoid the pressing questions. Who did it? What was their motivation? Was Toyosi killed because he was black? Are there others out there like those responsible for his death? And if there are, well, what are the implications?
The answers being found within the community itself in Tyrrellstown are far more encouraging than might at first have been anticipated. Because what the media conspicuously did not know is that this is a most unusual place.
Visiting the community and talking to its youngest residents, Toyosi’s classmates and friends, puts the events of Good Friday in a different perspective. Regardless of their place of birth, these kids have grown up in a neighbourhood, in which half the population was born outside Ireland. It only takes a glance around the schoolyard, where groups of multi-racial friends are playing together, paying no attention to skin colour, to see that there is a natural sense of integration, among the vast majority of the younger generation.
Adam Fitzsimons, chairperson of the Tyrrelstown Residents Association, agrees. “There’s no sort of distinction, no nationalities not playing together,” he says. “The adults are a bit different. But it’s not necessarily racist, just that you tend to stick more with the people you know, and certain groups tend to group together. But these days, the grown-ups are meeting one another through the kids and we’re building our community that way.”
Adam is unhappy with the way the community has been portrayed in the media, especially since there is no specific evidence that Toyosi’s murder was racially motivated. “It’s an outside view,” he says. “Here in Tyrrellstown, people know that it was just a knee-jerk reaction saying it was racist. The residents know exactly what’s going on and they’re asking questions as to why no statement has been made to say that it wasn’t racially motivated. Saying things in the news like ‘there was no racist history here in the past’ – that implied that this was racist.”
It is comforting that, in the wake of the killing, talking to the local kids, you get no sense at all of racially-based anger. There is just human sadness and a feeling that things have changed. Something horrible has happened in a place they thought was safe and people have yet to recover from it. “Everyone is a lot more scared,” seventeen-year-old Lynn Earls says. “Not to be in school, but going out into the neighbourhoods.” Emma Cooray, 14, agrees. “Everyone is taking it really hard,” she says. “Teachers are really careful of what they say. They’re scared of the backlash.”
Most of the students admit that the school atmosphere has changed significantly, but it is a feeling that is shared. These are kids who miss their friend. They are hurting. But the important thing is that they are hurting together.
Tony Wilson, 17, played football with Toyosi at school. “It’s his best friends that are taking it the worst,” he says. “They’re just quiet all the time, no one knows what to say to them. Toy was a cool guy, we all miss him.”
Mia Redican, 14, is similarly eloquent. “It’s terrible, it doesn’t feel the same at all (here),” she says. “Everybody’s sad. He was always making people laugh. No one laughs in the halls any more, because he’s not there to make us.”
Michelle Ato, 15, had tears in her eyes as she remembered Toy. “You would always see him having a cheesy smile on his face in the halls,” she recalls. “Always laughing, and always making everybody laugh.”
Tunrayo Olaifa, 15, didn’t want to talk about any issues – she just wanted to talk about Toy. “All I want to say is that we miss Toy so much and this school is not the same without him. He was everybody’s friend. There’s not as much laughter any more.”

The grieving process is never easy. But the younger you are, the more you feel the unfairness, the injustice of having a friend stolen from you. This is what the teenagers of Tyrrellstown feel more than anything. But they are also discovering the deeper sense of community that they share, irrespective of their ethnic background.
It is not the end of the story. Paul Barry of Pearse Street has been charged with manslaughter, not murder. His brother Michael Barry has been charged also, with the possession of a hockey stick. Many things may shape the public response to the court case. It will be important for justice to be done. It will also be important for justice to be seen to be done to the memory of the young Nigerian Irish boy whose life was taken in such a shocking way.
The hope is that in the meantime, the healing process will have continued for the community in Tyrrellstown. Because this is what they all need more than anything else. As Michelle Ato said, with simple wisdom: “It’s not hard, everyone should just get along, no matter what your skin colour.”
That is what most people instinctively feel. It is, we are all entitled to hope, the way of the future.