SIMS: Josue Silva and his friends deserved fun, not bloodshed, at ill-fated bush bash

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These are nice kids.

Good kids. Smart kids. Kids with dreams and ambitions.

COVID kids, who were denied the normal high school rites of passage because of the pandemic. No sports or clubs or school performances. No senior prom or graduation. A first year of university or college spent staring at computer screens instead of experiencing the joy of campus life.

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Kids who have grown up communicating with their cellphones, documenting their lives through Snapchat and Instagram, who text as easily as they breathe. Despite warnings to be careful, sharing their most personal thoughts and opinions online.

They shouldn’t have been forced to hide in the bushes, terrified, at an outdoor party, but instead allowed to make lasting memories to talk about at their high school reunions 20 years from now. As assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser pointed out in her closing address, the worst thing expected was some excessive underage drinking and pot smoking.

They should have been able to safely re-connect after months of isolation without some masked stranger showing up with a loaded handgun and murdering one of their friends just to impress a couple girls and show he was a tough guy.

There were times at the marathon bush party homicide trial when it was nothing short of infuriating to watch young people who experienced the most traumatic event of their lives be accused of bullying and lying about Josue Silva’s death with the killer sitting in front of them.

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The jury has officially signaled they saw through the defence attempts to demonize a bunch of nice kids by convicting Carlos Guerra Guerra, now 23, of second-degree murder for shooting Silva, 18, and assault with a weapon of Logan Marshall, now 22, who suffered a concussion from a hit with a machete by Guerra Guerra’s sidekick, Dylan Schaap.

The defence tried to flip the script, re-traumatizing the young people who gathered in the woods near Pack Road and Grand Oak Cross in southwest London on July 31, 2021.

Most demonized was Silva, the son of hardworking Mexican-born parents, loved by his friends, a university student with two summer jobs. The defence wanted the jury to believe he was a bloodthirsty hood, because of an infinitesimal amount of his DNA found on a machete that was likely Schaap’s. It was found near where Silva was bleeding to death.

His family, a constant presence in the courtroom during the trial, blames themselves for allowing their son to go to that party. They shouldn’t. No one expected the swaggering, gun-toting Guerra Guerra, cosplaying a rapper from the mean streets of London, Ontario, answering the frantic text of the love-struck damsel-in-distress Emily Altmann about saving her from 10 men – a lie concocted to get her bad-boy crush to show up at the party.

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Piecing together what happened meant getting into the heads of regular teenagers with cliques and beefs and gossipy social media accounts. As a parent of kids around the same age, it can be a weird place.

Let’s talk about the Lambeth kids (or ‘Lambo,’ as they call it), who went to Saunders and St. Thomas Aquinas and remain in shock about what happened.

Specifically, let’s focus on the group of boys, as close as brothers, many of whom grew up in the same neighbourhood, went to the same elementary school and played high school football together. The defence tactic was to portray these buddies as a marauding gang of thugs itching for a fight.

The leader of the pack was supposed to be Marshall, one of the most anticipated Crown witnesses. He testified after Altmann’s charges were stayed and couldn’t have been what the jury expected. He was slight and well-spoken. He is in an advanced geography program at Western University. When prodded by Moser, he modestly agreed he spent his summers fighting wildfires in northern Manitoba.

He was fair and honest. He grew emotional when he spoke about Silva, the best friend he met in Grade 9 science class. Silva helped him get a job at Party City and would playfully chide Marshall for taking a gap year while he was at university.

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It was easy to see why Marshall has so many friends. A nice guy. Not Al Capone.

That’s not to say these then-teenaged boys were a bunch of angels with fully developed frontal lobes. The jury saw a video of them goofing around with an airsoft gun. Among the scores of electronic messages were texts in a group chat set up when they were still in elementary school.

They named it “Blake will Mass Murder Them All” –  a title that was likely hilarious to Grade 7 boys whose main interests would be sports and video games. Even after all that’s happened, Marshall sheepishly admitted that they still haven’t changed the name.

But these are good kids. They weren’t filming each other dancing around with firearms or sending texts joking and gloating about the shooting.

That’s what Guerra Guerra and Schaap were up to, deep into some far-fetched fantasy about becoming rap stars. Altmann, a troubled kid blessed with every advantage, may have walked away scot-free, but she must live with the fact that she set into motion the senseless violence that left an innocent, unarmed teen dead.

Guerra Guerra thought he could wiggle out, too. He knew how to turn on the charm. While testifying, gone was the indecipherable street slang he wrote and said in his text chains. He told the jury he once thought about being an aerospace engineer, but opted to be “a musical artist.”

And then, like some doctorate student explaining his thesis, he told the jury how he had “studied” the music and videos of successful gangsta rap artists and had come to the conclusion he needed loaded handguns in his videos to be authentic.

His Colombian-born parents gave him every opportunity. He could have been a good kid, too.

Instead, he’s a murderer.

jsims@postmedia.com

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