On the evening of August 12, 2015, the sound of gunfire shattered an otherwise ordinary Wednesday night in Hamilton’s North End. Shortly before 8:30 p.m., Hamilton Police began receiving several 911 calls reporting shots fired at the Jamesville Housing Complex, in the neighbourhood between MacNab Street North and James Street North. Callers also reported that a man was down.
When police and paramedics arrived, they found 18-year-old Shariek Douse suffering from a gunshot wound. He had no vital signs and was pronounced dead at the scene. Police quickly established a crime scene around the area while forensic investigators began searching for anything that might explain who had killed Shariek and why.
The shooting had not gone unnoticed. Witnesses told CHCH that they heard three gunshots, followed by the sight of a teenager wearing a red shirt running from the area. Hamilton Police said numerous 911 callers described a person running away following the shooting. The description provided to investigators was of a Black male believed to be approximately 15 to 17 years old.
For Shariek’s family, his murder carried an especially disturbing sense of familiarity. They told CHCH that this was the second time Shariek had been shot at in the same neighborhood. CityNews reported that a 17-year-old boy had been shot in the same parking lot the previous November and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
That earlier shooting immediately raised an important question: had someone been targeting Shariek?
Police were unwilling to make that conclusion publicly. In the first days of the investigation, Hamilton Police said it was too early to determine whether Shariek’s murder had been a targeted attack, a random shooting or whether it was connected to gang activity. There was, however, another possible piece of the puzzle.
Only days after Shariek was killed, CHCH reported concerns that the violence might have stemmed from conflict on social media. Police had not confirmed that social media was the motive, but Shariek’s death became part of a broader discussion about online disputes between young people escalating into violence in the real world.
At the time, police acknowledged that they were seeing an increase in incidents involving social-media platforms. Arguments that might once have ended when people walked away from one another could now continue online, sometimes publicly and in front of an audience. An insult could be shared, repeated and answered. A relatively small dispute could become increasingly serious.
Whether that happened in Shariek’s case has never been established publicly by investigators.
What is known is that Shariek had reportedly survived an earlier shooting in the same neighbourhood and was then shot and killed approximately nine months later. That history makes the possibility of an ongoing conflict difficult to ignore, but there has never been public confirmation that the two shootings were committed by the same person or were directly connected.
There are other unanswered questions surrounding the person witnesses saw running from Jamesville that night. Was that person the shooter? Were they involved in some other way? Or were they simply a frightened teenager running after hearing gunfire?
The description released by police was limited. Investigators had reports of a black male approximately 15 to 17 years old running away after the shooting, while witnesses interviewed by CHCH recalled seeing a teenager wearing a red shirt. Police have never publicly identified that individual as Shariek’s killer.
The location of the murder also makes the continued mystery particularly striking. Shariek was not killed somewhere isolated in the middle of the night. He was shot at approximately 8:30 in the evening in a residential housing complex. Several people called 911. Witnesses heard the gunshots, and people apparently saw someone leaving the area.
Yet no one has ever been charged with Shariek’s murder.
Hamilton Police say Shariek’s friends and family cooperated with investigators, but police have continued asking anyone with additional information to come forward.
That may be one of the most important elements of the case today.
Hamilton Police acknowledge that witnesses in homicide investigations can sometimes be reluctant to speak because they are afraid of retaliation. With the passage of time, however, circumstances can change. Relationships end. People move away. Teenagers become adults. Loyalties that once seemed permanent disappear, and fears that prevented someone from speaking years earlier may no longer carry the same weight.
Hamilton Police continue to classify Shariek Douse’s murder as an open, unsolved homicide.
More than a decade has now passed since Shariek was killed, but several fundamental questions remain unanswered. Was his murder connected to the shooting he survived the previous year? Was an ongoing dispute responsible for both attacks? Did a conflict that existed partly on social media eventually spill into the real world? Who was the teenager witnesses saw running from Jamesville immediately after the gunshots? And perhaps most importantly, how many people know what really happened?
There is simply not enough publicly released evidence to answer those questions.
What can be said is that the circumstances make a completely random encounter only one of several possibilities investigators would have had to consider. Shariek had reportedly already been the victim of gun violence in the neighbourhood, and concerns about an ongoing conflict surfaced almost immediately after his death. But without an arrest, court proceedings or additional evidence released by Hamilton Police, those circumstances remain pieces of an unfinished puzzle rather than proof of a particular motive.
Shariek was only 18 years old when he was killed.
The person described by witnesses as being approximately 15 to 17 years old in 2015 would now be an adult in their mid-to-late twenties. The young people who were around Shariek at the time have grown older as well. Someone who was afraid to speak as a teenager may look at the situation very differently today.
Hamilton Police have made clear that an unsolved homicide remains open until an arrest is made and charges are laid. Shariek’s case remains among those investigations. Someone fired the shots that killed Shariek Douse on August 12, 2015. Someone may know whether his earlier shooting was connected. Someone may know why he was targeted or whether what happened that night unfolded for an entirely different reason.
After all these years, Shariek’s family is still waiting for those answers.
If you have any information regarding Shariek’s case, please contact any of the following:
Hamilton Police Service:
S/Sgt Dave Oleniuk – Homicide Unit: (905) 546-3829
Case Number: 15681401
Crime Stoppers: 1-800-222-TIPS(8477)
Online at: https://www.canadiancrimestoppers.org/submit-a-tip/submit-a-tip
Crime Stoppers provides anonymous tipping
Sources: Hamilton Police Service, CHCH News, City News, Homicide Canada
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