Norman Washington Manley Ennis, 43, was originally from Jamaica but lived in Canada for 20 years. He worked for Beck Taxi for 12 years. Norman Ennis was the father of two adult children and the stepfather of four others, the youngest aged five. He also had seven brothers and sisters in Jamaica. An older brother, Errol Ennis, was Jamaica's minister of state for finance. Mr. Ennis visited Jamaica 18 months before his death. "We had tried to persuade him for some time to come home," said Errol Ennis, "but he really loved Toronto." Mr. Ennis's wife, Bonnie Brake, begged him to find a safer job but he refused to believe he could be in danger, a relative said. In his 12 years driving for Beck he had never been robbed. Mr. Ennis's sister-in-law said he "loved meeting people" and several times told his wife how he gave customers rides home even though they didn't have enough money to pay for the entire trip. Mr. Ennis worked the night shift on December 9-10, 1991. His last dispatched call was at about midnight. Shortly before 3 a.m. another Beck driver, Ron Prashad, saw Mr. Ennis pick up two young men and a young woman at the Spectrum night club on Danforth Avenue. The last Mr. Prashad saw of Mr. Ennis he was driving north at Oakwood Avenue and Vaughn Road. Half an hour later a passing motorist found Mr. Ennis's taxi about 13 km (8 miles) away, at Eglinton Avenue West and Blackthorn Avenue, in front of the West Side Mall. The motorist saw a man running away from the scene. The taxi was in the middle of the eastbound lane of Eglinton Avenue. The driver's door was open and Mr. Ennis had collapsed beside the car. He had been shot in the jaw and the temple with a high-powered handgun, apparently through the driver's door window which was shattered. The meter read $10 when the police arrived, but it had probably been running on time after Mr. Ennis was shot. This suggested that any fare Mr. Ennis had in the taxi was picked up only a few blocks away. The murder scene was a short distance from an after-hours club where two men had been shot to death in October. Mr. Ennis briefly revived in the ambulance on the way to Sunnybrook Hospital, but died six hours later at about 9:20 a.m. Bonnie Brake was trimming the Christmas tree while she waited for him to come home when she got the news of the shooting. About 300 people attended Mr. Ennis's funeral. Taxis with black ribbons tied to their aerials joined the funeral procession to the cemetery.

Norman Ennis. (Source:Toronto Police Service Cold Case Files) A taxi association promised $5,000 to help pay for the funeral expenses. Taxi drivers donated another $2,000 to the family. Police quickly ran out of leads and on New Year's Eve, 1991, they launched a public appeal for information with the help of the Ennis family. "My father died and he was not the only one who died, a part of us died as well," said his daughter Gina. "Every night my little boy cries. He says, 'I want to go with Norman, I miss Norman,'" said Bonnie Brake. Mr. Ennis's murder was Toronto's 83rd homicide of 1991, compared with 52 for the previous year. Six more people would be killed by the end of December, setting a record for homicides that would not be broken until November, 2018. Interviewed in 2018, Anthony Ennis brought out a photo of himself and his father taken not long before the murder. Now 51 and older than Norman was at the time of his death, Anthony still held out hope that his father's 30-year-old murder would be solved. "When they announced that he was gone, that was the absolute worst moment of my life. I could face every single disappointment after that, because that was the worst thing that ever could happen. "He was my best friend, my guide and our protection. He was there to show us how to live and then he was taken away, just like that."