Hamed Khosrawi was at home on Monday afternoon with his mother when they realized his brother was late.

It wasn’t like Safiullah, a shy and hardworking 15-year-old, who usually came straight home from Woburn Collegiate Institute.

Hamed took off looking for him. The intersection at Ellesmere and Markham roads was blocked off with police tape — probably a car accident he thought. At the nearby mosque someone told him there had been a shooting at the school and students were in lockdown.

“I assumed the best and I thought he was in there taking shelter,” Hamed remembers.

By 6 p.m., he got a call from his panicked mother. Come home quick, she said. He could tell from her voice something was very wrong. He ran home “and that’s where I saw three cops with my parents.”

Safiullah was walking among a crowd of pedestrians when, just after 3:10 p.m., gunfire rang out multiple times. Terrified students scrambled. Safi, as he was known, was rushed to hospital where he died of his injuries.

Friends, family, teachers and members of the community gathered at Masjid Al Jannah Wednesday, a mosque teps from where Safiullah was shot, to remember the kind and quiet boy who lay inside in a simple wooden coffin covered with a green and gold cloth, a single red rose placed on top. They’re left looking for answers to why the Grade 10 student was killed.

Police have not said whether he was targeted or whether this was a case of mistaken identity, though Det.-Sgt. Andy Singh said the latter was “unlikely” because the shooting happened in broad daylight.

Another 15-year-old student at the school was arrested minutes after the shooting. The student, who cannot be identified under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is charged with second-degree murder. Singh said the accused shooter had gang affiliations but it was too early to tell if it was a factor.

Singh said he didn’t believe the accused and the victim were friends, and added there was nothing in Safiullah’s past that suggested he’d be in such a situation.

Friends, family and police all say Safiullah had no gang ties.

“He was an innocent young boy caught in the crossfire,” said Imam Hamza Wardak in his remarks following funeral prayers at the packed mosque Wednesday. Wardak taught Safiullah in an after school program for years and remembered him winning best behaviour awards.

“You’d probably think that this would be the last kid who would end up losing his life like this,” he told the crowd after hundreds bowed their heads in prayer.

“When everyone started running, this boy started running as well,” he told the Star before the prayers.

“And then suddenly he just collapsed.”

Hamed just wants to know why this happened to his brother, the youngest of four boys.

“This needs to be done. A 15-year-old kid in broad daylight gets shot, it’s just nonsense, something’s wrong there,” he said.

Sujanth Raveenthiran was among the crowd of students and pedestrians in the area when he heard gunshots ring out. He saw a figure laying on the ground, but only later did he realize it was his classmate.

“He has a smile worth a million dollars,” Raveenthiran said, adding residents in the area are “very concerned” about gun violence. He said he’d personally like to see more police presence.

Fourteen-year-old Zaid Yaqobi called Safi one of the best friends he ever had.

“He was one of the few kids that were ever nice to me,” he said. “This is the kid I used to play Dragon Ball with.”

Apostolos Kokkolis, 15, grew up with Safi and described him as “a good kid” who won class awards and always got good grades.

“He didn’t deserve to die,” Kokkolis said. “I actually want to see this community do better ... More youth programs, get them off the street.”

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“Our parents are scared to let us go alone in this area,” added Mabishan Gopalakirshnan, 15. “They’re scared that this could happen to anyone, it could have been us.”

At Woburn Collegiate, where classes resumed Wednesday following Tuesday’s teacher’s strike, the flag was half-staff. Grief counsellors were made available to both staff and students.

“I taught Safiullah in two classes. Wonderful young man. Always happy,” wrote one of Khosrawi’s teachers on a Go Fund Me online fundraiser, which had collected more that $12,000 to support the grieving family in less than 24 hours.

Arthur Matheson, who taught Safi in civics and English, was among those at the mosque for visitation before the prayers.

“He was just a nice, young man. I am deeply hurt by his passing,” he said.

“I never heard anybody say a mean word to him, I never heard him say a mean word.”

One of the questions Toronto police are investigating is where the alleged shooter got the gun — and whether it was brought to school.

They’re urging anyone with information about the shooting, including drivers and pedestrians with video footage, to contact police.

Ryan Bird, spokesperson for the Toronto District School Board, said in an email Wednesday that “we have no indication that a weapon was present in the school prior to Monday’s shooting that occurred off school property and after school hours.

“As with any similar case, we’re supporting Toronto Police in every way we can,” he said.

Khosrawi is Toronto’s fourth homicide in 2020. Of the four people killed, three were shot and were 25 or younger.

His death is a continuation of rising gun violence in the city, a pattern that last year contributed to a record-level number of people killed or injured by bullets: 292, the highest in at least 15 years.

Speaking to reporters after Wednesday’s Toronto police board meeting, Mayor John Tory acknowledged that both victims and alleged perpetrators of gun violence are getting “younger and younger.” That troubling pattern will be discussed at a meeting of GTA mayors and police chiefs next week, convened specifically to address rising gun violence across the region.

Tory said he hoped the meeting would prompt “significant” financial support from the other two levels of government to invest in social programming to address the root causes of crime. Although he acknowledged the federal government has provided some support and action — including a move to ban some firearms — Tory said he is “disappointed” in how much money they have provided the city.

“I had been led to believe by very senior people in the government that we had such a need, that was easily understood, and that we would get the support we needed,” Tory said, noting the city has received about one-sixth of what it requested from the federal government.

Amid rising violence in 2018, Toronto city council approved an anti-gun violence plan totalling more than $50 million. To date, much of that plan remains unfunded, including about $25 million in community-based initiatives designed by city staff to intervene with youth involved in conflict and prevent violence from happening in the first place.

But the federal government has since rejected most of the city’s requests for money for those programs, and council has not found new funding to implement the plan.

At the mosque, after packed prayers with more than 1,500 in attendance, mourners carried Khosrawi’s coffin down the stairs, on their way to a nearby cemetery.

Community member Zakia Alam, speaking after the prayers, said she’d come to pay her respects. She said the shooting had shaken her sense of safety.

Originally from Bangladesh, she knows what it’s like to leave your country looking for a brighter future for your children; Khosrawi’s father came from Afghanistan, a relative told the Star. Alam said it is especially heartbreaking to see tragedy happen here.

“They came here for a better life, she said.

“Now their son is gone.”

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro