Far from being a fine upstanding citizen and pillar of the community, Mr. Daring, it appears, was a career criminal and libertine:
First of all, he had a significant criminal record that spanned a decade, beginning in 1986 when he was but 22 and one of those arrested in a major-for-its-time narcotics bust (four people were charged after an eight-month investigation into the sale of marijuana, hashish and cocaine in Scarborough) that even made one of the local papers.
By the time of his last conviction, in 1996, Mr. Daring had acquired a total of seven criminal convictions, six for drugs (both for possession and possession for the purpose of trafficking) and one for assault with a weapon.
Now to be fair, in the intervening years, it is of course possible Mr. Daring turned his life around, and developed a distaste for the criminal life.
However, there is little beyond the barbecue and the T-shirts to suggest this, and the fact that at the time of his death, he was carrying 13 “dime” bags of marijuana — an amount that could be interpreted as being either for his personal use or for selling — hints that this rehabilitation, if it was under way, was hardly complete.
Neither, I think, could Mr. Daring be put forward as a candidate for father-of-the-year.
His 10 children are apparently shared among four different so-called “baby mothers,” one of whom lives near the complex where he was shot and killed. Unless he led a quadruple life, it is probably safe to say that there are not enough hours in the day to have allowed him, or anyone else for that matter, to be an involved and faithful parent to children spread out among so many disparate households.
Puts quite a different complexion on the whole sad affair, doesn't it? Instead of the martyrdom of a selfless citizen in the line of civic duty, we have just one low-life being shot by another low-life.
We shouldn't be so quick to canonize all gang shooting victims, because many of them could just as easily have been the shooters as the shot.
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