Brave woman testifies | Michele Mandel | Columnists | News | Toronto Sun: "She is a brave, brave woman.
Kishauna Thomas has stood up in court for two days now to finger the two alleged members of rival gangs whom she says brazenly opened fire at each other, killing her 11-year-old cousin Ephraim Brown in the crossfire.
She is just 21 and the Crown’s sole eyewitness against the two men whose fate depends greatly on her testimony. Gregory Sappleton, allegedly of the Baghdad Crew, and Akiel Eubank, accused of belonging to the rival Five Point Generalz, have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
Yet Thomas is composed and confident as she blames these purported gang members for the senseless events that stole an innocent young boy, a tragic confluence of circumstances that came together at her birthday party.
She was turning 18 and wanted to celebrate with a summer backyard barbecue and dance. But by the time the night was done, 24 bullets would be exchanged without any regard for the screaming crowd of partygoers.
One of those bullets hit a young boy in the neck.
Thomas said it was after she’d cut her birthday cake in the last few minutes of July 21, 2007 when she saw two different groups of guests making faces at each other as they stood at opposite ends of a short tunnel that bisected the Sheppard Ave. W. townhouse complex where she was holding her party with another friend.
Firing from one end of the tunnel, she said, was Sappleton, whom she knew as “Redz” and as a gang member of the Bloods’ affiliated Baghdad Crew. She said she’d seen him a few weeks before at a nearby plaza having an “altercation” with a guy known as “Rugged” and saw him lift his shirt to reveal a gun in his waistband."
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