Hani Othman was a 16-year-old male and a student at North Albion Collegiate Institute when he was killed in Toronto’s Rexdale area on Sunday, April 23, 2000. Shortly after noon, at approximately 12:13 p.m., Toronto police were called to a shooting at 246 John Garland Boulevard. Officers found Hani outside a townhouse residence suffering from gunshot wounds. Contemporary reporting indicated that he had been struck in the chest in a parking area associated with the complex.
He was rushed to a hospital, but his injuries proved fatal and he died shortly after arriving.
The killing occurred during an exceptionally violent Easter weekend in Toronto. Seven shootings were reported over the holiday period, leaving two people dead and several others wounded. Less than twelve hours after Hani was shot, 18-year-old Sheldon Bailey was also shot multiple times. Police examined whether the weekend shootings might be connected, although investigators cautioned at the time that establishing links between the separate incidents would be difficult. There is no indication in the available police information that investigators ultimately established that Hani’s killing was directly connected to the other shootings that weekend.
As investigators looked more closely at violence in the Jamestown and Rexdale area, Hani’s death became associated with a broader pattern of shootings involving young men who were friends, relatives, or associates of people connected to local street gangs. Later reporting identified Hani by the nickname “Egypt” and described a memorial wall in Jamestown honoring him along with several other shooting victims. Police intelligence presented during later court proceedings placed many of the young men surrounding that circle within or around competing Crips-affiliated groups. Secondary accounts of Hani’s case have said investigators suspected his shooting might have been gang-related because he had friends associated with the Crips, although the publicly available Toronto Police homicide page does not identify Hani himself as a gang member.
Hani was one of six young men killed before the June 2001 murder of Wayne Reid whose deaths became the focus of a special Toronto police investigation known as Project Alliance. According to reporting based on evidence from subsequent gang-related court proceedings, the project was intended in large part to break the silence surrounding the killings and find witnesses willing to testify against people police believed were responsible. Investigators encountered intense reluctance from potential witnesses, including fears of retaliation against themselves or their families. Project Alliance ultimately failed to obtain the cooperating testimony needed to bring the unresolved killings to court.
Despite the broader gang investigation, publicly available records do not identify anyone who was arrested or charged specifically with Hani Othman’s murder. No publicly identified suspect, prosecution, trial, or conviction for his killing appears on the current Toronto Police Service case record. More than two decades later, Toronto police continue to list Hani under homicide case 16/2000 in their cold-case files and continue to seek information from anyone who may know what happened at the John Garland Boulevard townhouse complex that afternoon.
