Cars whizzing past on Lake Shore Blvd. E. create a backdraft that knocks over the large blow-up photo posters of Alex Gillespie.

There are memorial flowers at this spot as well for a teenage boy who should never have died in the circumstances that killed him.

Not 20 metres to the left is a crosswalk with traffic light.

More: Alex Gillespie’s family alleges negligence by TTC, police in bus death

On the hot summer night of Aug. 19, 2010, the entire area swarmed with hundreds — perhaps upwards of 4,000 — young people, drawn to the location by an open beach party invitation on Facebook. Police knew about the event at least 24 hours in advance because they apparently look at Facebook too. Thirty-eight officers had been deployed, some on horseback and some on bicycles, some in ATVs, others on foot as they began marshalling the crowd away from the water’s edge and parallel strip of grass.

Anne Marie Keogh, who lives on the north side of Lake Shore, had noticed young people converging on the beach, on the sidewalk, haphazardly crossing the busy multi-lane street, a few hours earlier. A retired principal, Keogh was both puzzled and alarmed by the situation. She called police to ask whether they knew about what was taking place, “because young people without a purpose tend to find one.’’ She and her husband became increasingly concerned that a mishap might occur, with the crush of bodies and heavy vehicular traffic. Keogh placed a second call to the police. Then the couple went upstairs onto the upper deck of their home, which faces the beach.

At around 10 p.m., cops began dispersing the crowd, some issuing orders from loudspeakers mounted on squad cars. There were no traffic police, however, to funnel the kids toward the crosswalk.

Keogh was looking east when she heard a terrible crunch in the opposite direction. When she swivelled her head toward the noise, she saw “a young person down by the side of the bus screaming,’’ and thought this was the person who’d been hit. But the victim who’d been struck was under the bus, his injuries so severe that he died in hospital shortly afterward.

Keogh was back on the phone to police a third time. “I said, ‘Well, now someone’s been hit.’ ’’

That was Alex Gillespie, just 17 years old. He’d flown home to Toronto from British Columbia with his sister earlier that evening, was picked up at the airport by his father and dropped off at a friend’s house nearby. Alex had been at the beach party — which turned out to be rather a dud — for only about 20 minutes, according to his companion. Toxicology tests would show that he hadn’t been drinking, hadn’t consumed drugs.

At worst, Alex jaywalked, ran across Lake Shore and never made it safely to the other side.

The 7794 bus that hit him, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests filed by his parents, had just made the TTC loop about 150 metres away and was headed back eastward. It did not halt at the bus stop next to the crosswalk where passengers awaited but, the parents have deduced, switched instead from the curb lane to the passing lane and picked up speed. A TTC log, retrieved from vehicle data, shows the bus accelerated from 34 km/h to 57.6 km/h at the point where it hit Alex.

Who’s fault was this accident?

Clearly, Alex was crucially at fault for putting himself in the middle of the road, amidst traffic. He wasn’t a child, darting into the street, unaware of the danger. But he did what likely all of us have done at times, which was to cut through traffic, ignoring the traffic light close by. Tragically, he paid for that error of judgment with his life.

His grieving parents, however, believe there is an abundance of blame to go around — negligence by police, negligence by the TTC — and they’ve made it their mission to expose alleged mistakes, some systemic, others attributed to individuals, in their pursuit of justice. On Wednesday, the family filed a $2 million suit against the transit authority, the bus driver — identified as Gary Steadman — and the Toronto Police Services Board.

“This is not an issue particular only to our son,’’ said Bill Gillespie, a former CBC journalist, addressing media summoned to the location where his son died. “We believe there are systemic problems in the TTC and with Toronto Police Services that threaten everybody. They have to be fixed. We owe our son at least that much.

It’s taken Gillespie and his wife, Kathryn Wright — formerly a journalist, now a lawyer — some 18 months to collect the documents they sought and which buttress their statement of claim, which was served on the TTC Wednesday. Those claims have not yet been tested in court. The couple has interviewed transit officials, the two officers who did police reconstruction of the accident, and eyewitnesses. “We now believe we have the facts,’’ said Gillespie. “In our mind, certainly, both the Toronto police and the TTC were guilty of negligence and certainly contributed to my son’s death. If the TTC and the police had done their jobs properly, my son, our son, would be alive today.’’

Why, as transit authorities contend, was the TTC not told in advance that there was a large crowd expected at that site on that evening? The police knew of it but allegedly did not share this information so that the TTC could lay on more buses, thus perhaps dissuading youth from meandering around and spilling over onto the roadway.

Why weren’t traffic officers deployed to establish a safe exit strategy as all those kids walked back up from the beach?

Why did the bus driver not pull over to the bus stop? Why did he move into the passing lane, which contravenes TTC procedure? Why did he accelerate beyond the speed limit, which was 50 km/h, when confronted with what was obviously a situation that merited increased caution?

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“My question is why wasn’t he going 10, why wasn’t he going 20?’’ says Gillespie. “Wouldn’t you slow down?’’

One driver the family spoke with said he’d slowly navigated through the pedestrian traffic only minutes before the accident. “He said that when he approached the area, he had to slam on his brakes because there were so many kids everywhere, including in the middle of the road,’’ said Wright. “He slammed on his brakes and then he crawled through the rest of the way.’’ This individual, Wright added, tried to speak with police investigators when he heard about the accident but was shunted around and finally gave up.

Why didn’t TTC administrators at central command dispatch extra buses when their own drivers had been telling them, for several hours, that there was a clear need for more vehicles? Those drivers had been hitting their “overtaxed’’ button, alerting HQ to the problems developing.

Was there sufficient staff at TTC central command to cope with the fluid situation? Were they properly trained to respond? Alex’s parents don’t think so and believe the documents they’ve amassed corroborate their suspicions.

“Our basic position here is that there were two large city organizations’’ — TTC, police — “that didn’t do what they were supposed to do in the circumstances and did do some things they weren’t supposed to do,’’ Wright argues. “As a result we lost a wonderful person. Alex was an incredible, wonderful person. He was kind, caring, generous, funny, smart and an inspiration to his friends and his teachers and his family to do better, to be better. His loss is incomprehensible.’’

The TTC’s own “sequence of events’’ report notes that the bus “should have been in the curb lane,’’ the driver was “operating at excessive speed for conditions and posted speed limit’’ and the central supervisor refused to send more than one extra bus when the on-site supervisor requested more vehicles to handle “thousands of customers.’’

The bus driver was not charged.

Yes, Alex was at fault. But the story doesn’t die there.

Also on the Star:

Alex Gillespie’s family alleges negligence by TTC, police in bus death

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.