Wolsey Frazer, 47, was originally from Jamaica and was the lay minister of the Driftwood Church of God which he founded in 1978. He was married with five children -- a son and daughter aged 19 and 17, twins (boy and girl) aged 12 and a daughter aged six. Mr. Frazer had been a taxi driver for 17 years and was an independent owner-driver for six years. Prior to turning independent he had worked for Metro Cab. A close friend said that Mr. Frazer drove a cab because it allowed him to set his own hours and devote more time to his church and family. His car was not equipped with a radio. Mr. Frazer was the church choirmaster and "could play almost any instrument you could think of". Friends and acquaintances characterized him as a "so gentle, so humble, that he would apologize even if he was right". "He was a church man and a godly man who did not believe in violence of any kind." He did not worry about the dangers of cab driving "because he always had enough faith that everything would be okay". Mr. Frazer was found in his cab at about 6:30 a.m. outside 35 Blakley Avenue on July 20. A resident reported hearing a car door slam at about 1:50 a.m. and saw the parked cab when he looked out his window about five minutes later. At 3:30 a.m. the same resident saw the car still parked at an angle to the curb with its lights on but assumed that the driver had fallen asleep. When the car hadn't moved by 6:30 a.m. he looked inside. Mr. Frazer had been shot in the back of the head with a small-calibre weapon. Police covered the blood-soaked cab with a sheet until Mr. Frazer's body was removed about 2 p.m. In the meantime they scoured the dead-end street and a nearby park for clues. Over 1,800 people jammed the Crossroads Cathedral for Mr. Frazer's funeral and hundreds more gathered in the parking lot outside. The Driftwood congregation numbered only 78, but the church was affiliated with the New Testament Church of God, based in Tennessee and the largest Pentecostal church in Jamaica. Church leaders from Canada, the U.S. and Jamaica attended to pay tribute. In tracking Mr. Frazer's movements police discovered that he was at a doughnut shop on Keele Street and Rogers Road between 1:15 and 1:30 a.m. when a young Black man with a thin face and build came in and asked him for a ride. Mr. Frazer finished a cup of tea and left with the man. No further progress was made until Sept. 11, when police pulled over a car and found the murder weapon, a .22 calibre semiautomatic pistol, in the back seat.

Wolsey Frazer. (Source: Toronto Globe & Mail, July 22, 1988, p. A13.) Police charged the driver and the passenger but later withdrew charges against the driver. This man claimed that his passenger had confessed to him while they were both in the Metro East detention centre. Cartridges from a .22 gun were found at the passenger's home. The accused killer had entered Canada from Jamaica as a refugee claimant. A reputed gang enforcer, he was tried for second degree murder but acquitted in Dec. 1990 largely on the strength of an alibi provided by his girlfriend. In 1991 the man shot his girlfriend to death. He was sentenced to three years for manslaughter. In 2002 the woman's niece and nephew were shot to death in separate gang-related incidents.