Loved ones remember young father

Community expresses anger, exasperation at loss of Ajay Simpson, 20, gunned down last month

- CALVI LEON

Ajay Simpson's loved ones told the Star that his newborn daughter was with him when he was fatally shot last month near Jane Street and Falstaff Avenue. Police said last week that a suspect, 14, has been arrested and charged in the shooting.

Ajay Simpson lived and breathed basketball, rarely losing to his friends in games. So it was no surprise that the 20-year-old had big ambitions for his three-month-old daughter, envisioning her as a future WNBA star.

“He talked about basketball all the time,” said Natoya Harriott, Simpson’s mother. “He wanted his daughter to play.”

Simpson was thrilled to become a dad. Harriott, on the other hand, joked that she wasn’t so enthused when she learned he’d be having a baby.

“I was kind of upset because I was like, ‘You’re so young,’ ” she said. But as soon as she laid eyes on his baby girl, everything changed.

“I just fell in love with her.” Simpson’s newborn, who has only

just begun to mimic sounds, now faces a world without her father after he was killed in a late-night shooting on June 24 near Jane Street and Falstaff Avenue in North York.

Simpson’s loved ones told the Star that his baby was with him when, according to police, four individuals in a light-coloured SUV approached the area, exited the vehicle armed with guns and shot in his direction.

The shooters fired multiple rounds, but only Simpson was struck.

“He was trying to shield his baby,” said Collin Walters, his mentor and father figure, who goes by the name Fyahnese.