Repeated stints in prison, getting stabbed in the neck, being shot twice - once by a former close friend – all failed to deter Mahad Al Mustaqim from leaving a life of crime with the West Island Streetgangsters.
Mahad, 26, only changed after a simple comment from his mother.
“I was in prison in Ontario and asked her how the other kids were. She told me that I am all that they have. You're their big brother. They need you," he recounts.
Mahad was the eldest of nine kids raised in a 4 ½ in the Cloverdale block of Pierrefonds. His Muslim parents came from Djibouti via Somalia but their great Canadian dream started to unravel when Mahad's dad left after fathering the nine kids.
Mahad was 12 when his father left.
Mahad then started spending time with tough guys, attempting to impress his new friends by shoplifting and staying out late.
His first real troubles began when he was fingered in a schoolyard turf battle aimed at helping a friend attain vengeance
A stint in a reform facility exposed him to a new world of criminals-in-training.
Once released, he was sent to anger management therapy, which proved a waste of time.
His only outlet lay in basketball but his time on his local team would come to an abrupt end.
One night while walking home at about 11 p.m., he was attacked seriously for the first time.
“These four guys came up and started asking me questions about who is who. I told them I don't know anything and one of them stabbed me in the neck."
He struggled home with a trail of blood to his door, where he was met by the stern glare of his overburdened mother.
An emergency room medic told him that he narrowly escaped death, as the knife only just missed his jugular vein.
His injury forced him off his local basketball team and his transformation into a life of crime accelerated quickly as a result.
He told his friends in the Streetgangsters that the only way out of the gang is through prison or death.
About 30 remained in the gang, including some who quit jobs and school to stay in.
Mahad was then sent to prison in 2006 at the age of 18 for attempted murder. When released in April 2009, he was only further alienated.
“Most of my old friends had moved on with their lives and I had nobody around me,” he said
There would be no peace. He was standing one night in July 2009 with his girlfriend outside the Cloverdale Housing Co-op on
Basswood in Pierrefonds, smoking a cigarette
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A car parked in the distance and three young men walked towards him. He paid them no mind until his girlfriend suggested he turn around. He saw a gun pointed right at him. He pushed his girlfriend inside the building and ducked.
One bullet went into his spine and out his stomach. Another went into his right leg. Mahad ran into the nearby woods nearby, heart pumping full of adrenaline.
Mahad was too greviously injured to cry out for help but a child saw him from a window. He was rushed to hospital where he was told that he’d never walk again.
A specially-adapted apartment was set up but he managed to find his feet and skipped much of his rehab.
His resolve to survive the savage world of gang violence was now coupled with a bitter sense of betrayal,
The man who shot him was longtime friend
Jonathan Klor, who had recently made a jailhouse conversion from the Crips (blues) to the Bloods (reds). Klor's new gang demanded proof of allegiance by attacking his ex-mates, whom he had little trouble finding.
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Klor and his Diplomats street gang shot at a couple of other associates around the same time. He was sentenced 14 years in prison.
Klor was 24 when sentenced and hopes to be out in a couple of years in time to celebrate his 30th birthday. Jonathan Castilho, another shooter, was later found dead.)
Mahad defied the medical skeptics and learned to walk again. He skipped much of his rehab in an attempt to return to action in the gang hierarchy where he was now imbued with a mission.
“Sad to say but I took it personally. I knew I needed more money, more people, more guns. I started dealing more. I changed. I saw every day as my last."
Mahad was shot in the shoulder in a drive-by in Toronto in September 2010 but that didn't slow him down. What did was when he was re-incarcerated after being rounded up at Bar Seven in downtown Montreal. He was with other criminals, a parole violation.
His father came to visit him in prison and attempted to talk him into changing his ways. "It was too late for that," said Mahad.
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| Klor |
Mahad by now was also a father himself. His girlfriend of 10 years bore a daughter one month before he was sent back inside. She lost patience with his gang ways and left him.
Mahad was more alone then ever when freed in March 2012.
Mahad's new plan was to cash in with a criminal set of Somalis in Toronto and Ottawa, trading in weapons, his specialty. But things soured again.
He was fingered in a shooting that took place in Ottawa and although he insists he was not guilty of the charge, he opted for the easier route of making a guilty plea and getting out faster.
This time, however, he found himself bouncing around hostile incarceral environments in Toronto and Kingston where he had a particularly vicious fight that led him to be sent to solitary in the hole.
Mahad was offered a phone call and rang up his mom.
“I asked how the family is doing. 'They are growing up' she told me. It touched me because she was always telling me they have nobody but me. After that, for the first time I started thinking about changing,” said Mahad.
In prison he read from the Bible and Koran and finished his high school education.
Once out he took a course in social work at UQAM but realized that his criminal record would prevent him from working in the field, so he has concentrated on establishing his own group, an fledgling effort that he now hopes others will help support.
. He has embraced his native Islam and speaks about his experience to school students, at religious events and anywhere else they'll listen.
"Islam helped me understand my purpose in life and get off the bad path, by helping others.”
Mahad is now married with one young daughter and another child soon on the way.
“I really regret a lot of things. I persuaded my friends to quit jobs and university for this life," he said. "Now I hope to persuade young people to do the opposite."
He works at a steady job but doesn't always feel complete peace of mind after so many run-ins. “Sometimes I look around when I go out to start my car,” he said. "I still worry that someone might target me, thinking maybe I'll talk to police or something. That's something I would never do."
In Coolopolis' ongoing attempt to poison local geography, we present stories from these spots so you'll always be terrified and sickened when you pass by.TOP: Jean Milot and des Oblats in LaSalle where John Connearney, 36, shot cop Richard Larente dead and injured partner Richard Oss when they pulled his brown 1963 Ford over for suspicion of drunk driving on 14 June 1973. Connearney was a fugitive from Quincy Mass. living in Canada since 1962. He was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted but he was killed by prison guards in a 1980 prison riot. (BTW, I'm researching a recently-deceased fugitive nicknamed Boston Mike who might have been part of the Bulger crew before fleeing to Montreal about 30 years ago - pls contact me if you know about this guy). MIDDLE: Laneway between Peel and Stanley south of Sherbrooke. Frank Holmes, Thomas Holmes, William Reich and William Quaile were convicted of raping two women, one a 38-year-old mother of four, in a car taken to this spot on April 23, 1947. Frank Holmes offered the women a lift home to Point St. Charles after meeting them in a bar. Instead he stopped at Bleury and Dorchester and the other three men jumped in and then brutally sexually assaulted the women in the car parked in this laneway before dumping them off at Knox and Charlevoix. They stole their cash and bus tickets as well. They were sentenced to 12 years and 10 strokes of the lash. BOTTOM: 1871 Belanger E. A man entered the Bar La Gaiete at 11:10 p.m. on Saturday March 13, 1977 and shot five people dead, including barmaid Monique Renault-Hebert, manager Michel Arsenault, 40 and patrons Jacques Fortin, 42, Jeannette Adams, 25 and Michel Chorel, 19. Three others were wounded as the killer sprayed the place with a M-1 semi-automatic. 
