Aside from the holes in the screen door, there is little to distinguish Jairam Singh's house in Brampton from those of his neighbours, at least from the outside.
Clad in reddish-brown brick, it's a classic suburban two-storey, with the trademark two-car garage jutting out the front toward Sunforest Drive.
Inside, the front hall looked equally unremarkable yesterday, except for all the shoes. But that's what happens when there's an unexpected death in a close-knit family: the visitors come in droves.
In Mr. Singh's case, death came through the front door early Saturday and took his 20-year-old daughter, Amretta, from his arms.
It came in the form of bullets, fired from a handgun by a young man who had followed Ms. Singh, two of her brothers and a male cousin home from a Brampton nightclub after closing time, police say. The man fled, possibly with two others, in a red Honda Civic.
Ms. Singh's death also came at a time when police and politicians are struggling to find a way to reverse a troubling increase in gun violence in the Toronto area, much of it gang-related.
Peel Regional Police say the shooting came after "an altercation" inside the Calypso Hut 2, a restaurant and nightclub on Melanie Drive that's seen violence before, where 200 to 300 people gathered Friday night.
Acting Inspector Rick De Facendis said homicide detectives were having trouble finding club-goers willing to talk to police, and were still trying to determine whether the dispute was spontaneous or long-standing, and whether it was gang-related.
The only thing he sounded sure about, in the peculiar language of police officers, was that Ms. Singh was not the intended target: "She was a very unlucky recipient of indiscriminate gunfire through a closed door."
For his part, Mr. Singh, 47, can't fathom his sons or nephew playing any part in what happened. He thinks they were the random targets of young toughs looking for trouble.
But that was hardly his preoccupation yesterday, as he sat quivering and broken in the living room off of that front hall, wondering aloud why his daughter had to die, and how he'll ever get over it.
"It doesn't interest me," he said of the investigation, as his sister, Geeta Ramganesh of Mississauga, leaned in for support. "My daughter is gone and nothing's going to bring her back."
When Mr. Singh, a self-employed electrician, went to bed Friday night, he expected to awake to a houseful of young people sleeping in after an all-ages event at the Calypso Hut, which his family had visited several times before, including last Mother's Day.
Instead, he was roused by the muffled crack of gunfire, followed closely by the louder, clearer sound of screaming from the hall below.
Mr. Singh bolted from bed, descended the stairs and found his daughter unconscious and bleeding from two wounds, one to her mouth and another to her abdomen.
"She died on my lap," he said.
According to Mr. Singh, the four arrived home by taxi at about 2:45 a.m.
"When they started opening the door, the car made a U-turn," he said.
As they walked to the front door, a tricked-out, medium-red Civic with dark windows and a chrome tailpipe came up the street behind them, police said.
Mr. Singh's youngest son, 16-year-old Ashae, turned to see a guy getting out of the car, holding a gun. The four were in such a rush to get inside, they bent the house key opening the door, which they promptly closed, thinking it would save them.
But the door was no match for the shots that came. Aside from the two that struck Mr. Singh's daughter, one shot grazed his nephew's knee, while another passed through the sagging armpit of his son's coat.
As he cradled his dying daughter and implored her to "hold on," his son called 911, but she was declared dead shortly after arriving at hospital.
Mr. Singh yesterday reflected on the irony of his daughter's death, since most of his extended family have left Trinidad seeking greater peace and opportunity of Canada.
He and his wife arrived in 1987 "looking for the best thing for our kids," he said. After several years in the Toronto area, they moved 150 kilometres east to Warkworth, Ont., where they could afford a house with a swimming pool on a large lot in the town of 2,500.
"But our kids wanted city life," he said.
Last year, after Mr. Singh landed some work in Brampton, they moved back to the Toronto area.
"Everybody was so happy," he said, "but it cost me my baby."
By Friday, that baby had grown into a radiant young woman who hoped to become a nurse. That day, in fact, she wrote an admissions exam at George Brown College, and came home boasting about how easy it had been.
Hours later, she was dead.
"My daughter is 20 years old, and she would come in in the morning and jump in my bed like a little three-year-old," Mr. Singh said, breaking into sobs.
As he contemplated her killers, Mr. Singh betrayed little desire for justice from the courts.
He expressed only hope that they would see her picture, and that it would bother them. "They might as well look at what they have done," he said. "I just want the world to see what they have done to this innocent, pure angel."