As family and friends of Sammy Yatim gathered to remember the young man’s life Wednesday night, new details of the events leading up to his killing began to emerge from witnesses with him in his final minutes.

Jessica Doyle remembers Yatim walking right past her, knife in hand, aboard the streetcar where he died, seemingly oblivious to her presence. The 18-year-old was focused intently on something ahead of him.

“He didn’t pay me any attention. He just walked right by me,” said 28-year-old Doyle. “He seemed angry. He was very focused on something at the front of the streetcar. I’m not sure if it was the people or just one person in particular.”

When Doyle saw Yatim, the knife was in his right hand and his left held his exposed genitals.

“To be honest, the first thing that crossed my mind, based on him holding a knife and his penis, was that he wasn’t mentally stable,” said Doyle.

Doyle was terrified. She made herself as small as possible in her streetcar seat until Yatim passed. Then she escaped safely through the streetcar’s open back doors.





Yatim, 18, was shot and killed by police early Saturday in an event well-documented through video taken on-scene. Shortly after midnight, officers approached the stopped streetcar, yelling “Drop the knife!” Yatim was the only one on the vehicle when a police officer fired multiple shots, killing him.

It was the flip of a coin that put Aaron Li-Hill and his lime-green bicycle between the streetcar full of people and a man wielding a knife.

“I actually wasn’t even going to go on that streetcar,” he said. “Sometimes I flip a coin to make decisions and I flipped a coin and it was like, ‘Yeah, go pick (my girlfriend) up.’ ”

The pair boarded the streetcar near Kensington Market at 11:50 p.m. Li-Hill was standing in the centre of the streetcar with his girlfriend and bike when he noticed Yatim sitting at the back, across from a group of teenage girls.

Li-Hill first heard giggling from the back of the streetcar as it was moving along Dundas St., near Bathurst St. Then he heard a scream.

“It wasn’t a normal yell — I could hear terror,” he said.

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He saw the flash of a knife and the girls ran past him toward the front doors. Li-Hill raised his bike as a barricade, keeping all of the passengers behind him. Li-Hill said he did not see if Yatim had exposed himself, but his eyes were focused on the man’s knife and face.

Yatim told everyone to remain on the streetcar as he was advancing, said Li-Hill. The driver stopped the vehicle and Li-Hill slowly moved backward, locking eyes with Yatim.

“He looked very crazed, very intense. His eyes were completely wide open — his jaw was clenched, his fist was clenched around the handle of the knife,” he said. Li-Hill said Yatim advanced slowly, holding the knife, with a blade of about three inches, outstretched in front of him.

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As people exited the streetcar, Yatim revised his earlier command and told everyone to get off, said Li-Hill.

Once everyone was off, Li-Hill looked back and saw the driver still in front of the controls. He called out but Yatim was already nearby, knife in hand.

Yatim looked at the driver.

“I really thought that this could be a moment where someone gets stabbed right in front of me,” said Li-Hill. But then Yatim looked away and began yelling at the crowd outside the streetcar. Markus Grupp, a passerby on the street, said the driver leapt out shortly before police arrived.

Li-Hill, an artist visiting from New York, and his girlfriend, were in a nearby alley when they heard the shots ring out. Looking back, Li-Hill said he was scared but didn’t feel Yatim would have acted.

“If he really wanted to stab someone, he would have acted more quickly: he wouldn’t have walked so slowly toward the front of the streetcar, he wouldn’t have been yelling those commands — he would have just stabbed somebody.”