The siblings of a man shot down in Toronto’s Black Creek neighbourhood earlier this week recall watching paramedics working on their dying brother and hoping that it wasn’t him.

Jibri Husana James, 39, was killed a few blocks away from his home. Officers said that he was outside a building when an unknown assailant approached him and repeatedly shot him in the back.

“The words can’t describe … it’s just a feeling that’s unbearable, but you still try to stand, you still try to believe, no, it’s not true, it’s a mistake,” his sister, Latonya Grant, told CTV News Toronto.

“It’s like you can say painful, but it’s not even the word to describe what something like this does to you,” his other sister Tamasha James said.

Jibri Husana James was a mechanic and a father to two daughters. His sisters said he was very “protective of them” and that he spent a lot of time taking care of his elderly mother.

“It impacts our family a great deal,” Latonya said.

Police responded to reports of a shooting in the area of Shoreham Drive and Shoreham Court shortly after midnight on July 9. When officers arrived on scene, they found a man unconscious and unresponsive. He was later pronounced dead at the scene.

Det. Jason Shankaran said there may have been a second suspect who drove a getaway vehicle. He could not speak to the motive behind the shooting.

“I can’t say this victim was targeted for being who he was, but I can say that it does appear that he was targeted for being in the neighbourhood he was,” Shankaran said on the day of the shooting.

Police are still searching for both suspects.

The shooting took place less than 24 hours after another man was fatally gunned down just a block away. Police have said they have no firm evidence linking the shootings, but they are exploring the possibility that there was a connection.

Tamasha said her brother has lived in the neighbourhood his whole life.

“I hear a lot of ‘he was in the wrong place at the wrong time” she said. “This is his community. He lives here. There is no wrong place, wrong time. He should be able to walk where he wants to walk without fear of being gunned down.”

James’ family is urging the suspects to turn themselves in and “give the family some kind of sense of closure.”