To: Helen McEntee , Roderic O’Gorman , Paul Murphy
Demand a Statutory Public Inquiry into the Killing of Toyosi Shittabey
I am calling on the Minister for Justice to exercise her power under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 to establish an independent, statutory inquiry into the 2010 killing of Toyosi Shittabey.
We demand that this inquiry specifically investigates:
- The adequacy of the initial Garda investigation and evidence collection.
- Whether racial bias or institutional racism impacted the State’s handling of the case.
- Why the legal process failed to reach a conclusion, leaving the family without a completed trial or a verdict for 16 years."
Why is this important?
Close your eyes and think of 2010. For most of us, it’s a lifetime ago. We’ve finished school, started jobs, traveled the world, and fallen in love. We’ve grown up.
Toyosi never got to grow up.
He is frozen in time at fifteen. He is the boy in the football jersey who never got to play his final match. He is the son who never got to come home for dinner on that Good Friday. He is the brother whose laughter was replaced by a silence so loud it still rings in his family’s home sixteen years later.
When Toyosi was taken, a piece of Dublin died with him. But the real tragedy didn't end on that street in Tyrrelstown. The tragedy continued in the courtrooms and the Garda stations, where the system looked at a grieving family and eventually just… stopped.
How do you tell a mother that no one is responsible for her son’s heart stopping? How do you explain to his friends that the law has no answers for them?
Every signature on this petition is a candle lit for a boy who was left in the dark. It is a message to the State that we haven't forgotten the child who loved football and had a smile that could light up a room. We are signing because Toyosi’s life was precious, and the truth is the very least he is owed.
