The sounds of a lone trumpeter will fill a midtown park Monday as friends and family of Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin gather for a private memorial to the two men who were gunned down eight years to the day.

“For us, it’s a long-term, permanent fracture to our reality and a huge loss which continues eight years later,” Alan Dudeck, Martin’s stepfather, told the Sun. “They were at the peak of their life (and) both extremely personable and caring people.”

Ellis, 26, and Martin, 25, were shot and killed at close range outside of a Richmond St. W. apartment building early on June 13, 2008 while waiting inside a Range Rover to return a set of keys to a friend.

Who shot the pair? Police still don’t know. No suspect in the shooting has ever been named.

Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux, a veteran Toronto Police homicide investigator, has been leading the investigation since the beginning.

He said the biggest challenge in solving this case has been understanding why the gunman shot Ellis and Martin.

“Until this time, I haven’t really come to a motive,” Giroux said in an interview last week. “That has always been the biggest hurdle for me is that, what was the motive for the shooting?”

It hasn’t been determined if the two men were targeted or if there is another reason such as a mistake in identity.

Giroux said to his knowledge the friends weren’t involved in any nefarious activity, adding they lived a non-high-risk lifestyle.

“They were really quite impeccable characters,” Giroux said. “They were from good families. They were very well educated. They had good jobs.”

Giroux said there have been few developments since the shootings in 2008.

He said there have been a few “vague, intangible” leads as a result of yearly updates.

Dudeck hopes someone with knowledge of what happened will report it to authorities.

“People should not be reluctant to come forward if they can help the investigation,” Dudeck said.

He said he wants to see the suspect brought to justice and he’s prepared for what could be a very painful trial process.

“Many, many times people assume the families of victims if someone is convicted of a charge will be feeling a lot better ... that’s not the case,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dudeck continues his push for stronger laws to crack down on guns in order to stop the suffering.

“The impact on (the victims and) the families and friends associated with them, you can’t even calculate what kind of damage that (gun violence) results in,” Dudeck said. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no valid reason for anyone to have a handgun.”

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It was a shooting that outraged residents across Toronto and investigators are still trying to find the gunman eight years later.

Emergency crews received a frantic 911 call just after midnight on June 13, 2008 with reports of shots fired outside of 798 Richmond St. W., an apartment building southeast of Trinity Bellwoods Park and west of Bathurst St.

When police and paramedics arrived, they found 26-year-old Dylan Ellis and 25-year-old Oliver Martin in a dark-coloured Range Rover.

Ellis and Martin were rushed to hospital where they died shortly after arriving.

The men stopped in front of the apartment building to return a set of keys to a friend hours after watching an NBA playoff game.

According to Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux, Ellis said something like ‘How’s it going?’ to the suspect and that’s when the men were shot.

Martin’s girlfriend, who was in the back seat and took a photo of the men laughing moments before the shooting, survived the incident.

Giroux said investigators haven’t been able to establish a motive and a suspect hasn’t been identified in connection with the case.

Anyone with information is being encouraged to contact the homicide unit at 416-808-7400 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-8477.