Standing just down the street from where his cousin was shot dead, Trevor Young said he can’t stop wondering what the mother of two young sons, with a third on the way, was thinking as she lay dying.

“Knowing that she was carrying a baby, I just don’t know what would have been going through her mind,” Young said Sunday, glancing down Jamestown Cres. to the intersection where Candice Rochelle Bobb was killed, now host to young children laughing and chasing each other in the dusk light.

“Did she think, ‘am I going to live or am I going to die?’ ”

Exactly one week after Bobb was fatally shot — prompting an emergency c-section to deliver her premature son — a small group of Jamestown Cres. residents and religious and community leaders gathered in the north Etobicoke neighbourhood for a vigil to remember the young mother, and to call for an end to the violence that cut her life short.

Bobb is among the victims of a surge of violent crime that has seen the city’s homicide count double that of this time last year, up to 30 from 15.

Bishop James Robinson, from Faith Open Door Ministries, said there is a “dark force” that has been hovering over the Rexdale neighbourhood that includes Jamestown Cres., in north Etobicoke, for well over a decade.

It dates back to 2005 — the infamous Year of the Gun, when Toronto’s homicide total spiked to 80. As then, residents today “don’t know who’s next,” Robinson said, his voice blasting through speakers set up in a central courtyard and echoing through the community.

He urged the person or people responsible for Bobb’s death to turn themselves in, and urged anyone with information to come forward.

“You live here, you know what’s happening, you know what’s going on. I appeal to you people: don’t allow any coward to prevent you from speaking the truth,” he said. “The problem in this city is too much hush-hush.”

Bobb, 35, of Malton, was killed just after 11 p.m. last Sunday when the car she was in was sprayed with bullets while parked near Jamestown Cres. and John Garland Blvd.

She was the only one of four occupants who was shot. The driver took the car to Etobicoke General Hospital, where doctors pronounced Bobb dead but delivered her baby.

Young, Bobb’s cousin, did not have the latest information on the baby boy’s health status but believes the child is still in stable condition. The rest of the young woman’s family, including Bobb’s two other sons who are both under 16, are holding up all right, considering the tragic circumstances that “hit us like a fastball,” he said.

Police have said the car in which Bobb was riding was targeted for unknown reasons. No one inside the car was known to police.

As the group gathered in a courtyard on Jamestown Cres. to sing songs to honour Bobb and speak about gun violence, a pair of uniformed police officers patrolled the area on bikes.

In the wake of Bobb’s death, there have been calls for a greater police presence in the area; in just over a year, Jamestown Cres. alone has seen three gun-related deaths.

In March 2015, Donald Beckles, 46, was shot dead while smoking a cigarette on the porch of his Jamestown Cres. home. Three months later, down the street, Lecent Ross, 14, was killed by a single bullet from an illegal semi-automatic handgun. A 13-year-old boy was later charged with manslaughter.

“It’s never ending. We are still in pain — everybody’s hurt,” said Jennifer Lawrence, a resident of the area for the last ten years.

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People in the community did not know Bobb because she lived in Malton, but a handful of locals and religious leaders wanted to honour the life that was lost there, Lawrence said.

They also wanted to raise awareness about the need for change in the area, beginning with law enforcement. “Police only come when there’s a killing,” Lawrence said.