A boy, 9 or 10, stood outside the Alexandra Park community centre Saturday morning, hands buried deep in his jacket pockets, nothing much to do.

He should have been playing hockey, but the boy and his friends woke up to find their neighbourhood had morphed overnight into a crime scene. A 27-year-old man identified by police as Roberto Dixon had been shot in the head. He was dead, another man was injured and a shooter was at large.

The hockey game was cancelled. The kids trudged home through the snow, past the yellow police tape that cut across the park and playground outside the elementary school.

Now the boy stood outside the community centre with Mohsin Khattak, a neighbourhood youth worker who was startled by the child’s casual reaction to it all.

“Hearing his tone, it’s almost like it’s another day in the neighbourhood for him,” Khattak said later. “It’s not even a big deal for him to know that somebody was shot and murdered in a park that he plays at.”

Khattak was sitting inside the centre with three other members of the Alexandra Park Safety Network, a group of front-line community workers. Mid-morning, they were gathered around a table, stone-faced, ignoring their coffees, thinking about the victim’s girlfriend and his children and thetrauma this would cause in a neighbourhood where no one has been spared from the impact of gun violence.

“It’s hard when you speak to these young kids and they’ve been exposed to this so many times now that they become desensitized,” Khattak said. “It’s hard for them to have a positive outlook on life and be motivated to do things when they’re just like, well you know what, I’ve lost so many friends at a young age, who knows if I’m gonna live past 25?”

Roberto Dixon was in the park near Bathurst and Dundas Sts. with a friend just after 4:15 a.m. A man approached and asked Dixon for a cigarette, police told the community workers. Dixon said no, and the man shot him in the head. A second victim, a man in his 30s, was shot in the hip. Police said he is expected to survive.

No suspect information has been released. The Toronto police homicide unit continues to investigate.

Dixon was the father of two children younger than 5, who are left without a dad. Their young mother is now a single parent. His death leaves a family in mourning and destabilizes an entire community.

“For every person who is murdered, you’ve got at least 100 people around them that are suffering,” said Veronica Salvatierra, sitting across from Khattak in a back room at the bustling community centre.

The front-line workers stressed that society must address the trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder — “post-traumatic streets disorder,” Salvatierra calls it — that young people exposed to gun violence in their communities are forced to live with, or some kids will continue to grow up and use guns to deal with their pain and anger.

“For me, when something like this happens, it’s not about gangs. It’s not about crimes,” said Donna Harrow, another safety network member and chair of the African Canadian Coalition of Community Organizations. “It’s about how we are dealing with the mental health of our youth who are vulnerable.”

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There is a pressing need for funding for mental health programs targeted at vulnerable youth, and the government needs to invest routinely, Harrow said. “Not just when we get slapped in the face with something like this.”

By early afternoon, the outdoor rink in Alexandra Park had reopened and children were skating happily, as the investigation continued in the nearby park and police tape fluttered in the winter wind.