Mother urges witnesses to speak out over Isaiah Macnab's fatal shooting

Her heart started racing as soon as she saw the news of a shooting near downtown Kitchener last September.

Kelly Macnab was at home on Sept. 20, 2018 and started to read the story on CBC News about a shooting at King Street and Pandora Avenue.

"Obviously [I] felt a little bit panicked. I was calling him and texting him with no response," Macnab said.

She found more information online, including that the shooting was at the halfway house where her son Isaiah Macnab was staying.

And she saw the photo of a body at a picnic table covered with a tarp.

"I can't explain how, but from that moment I knew it was my son," Kelly Macnab said.

"I got down on my knees. I started screaming and praying to God just saying, please don't let this be my son."

Police arrived an hour later. She didn't ask them why they were there.

"My words were, 'It's him?' And I just kept saying it over and over," she said to the officers before collapsing to the ground.

Suspects flee in white Mercedes

Isaiah Macnab, 20, was shot around 11:15 a.m. and an autopsy determined he died from multiple gunshot wounds. Two people were seen fleeing the area in a white, four-door Mercedes. The car was last seen on Sept. 20, 2018 driving southbound on Trafalgar Road after exiting the eastbound lanes of Highway 401.

Cherri Greeno, spokesperson for the Waterloo Regional Police Service, said they've released an updated description of one of the suspects: he was wearing dark pants, a dark hoodie and a baseball hat. The second suspect remained in the car and there is no description of that person.

"We continue to appeal to the public for more information so we can bring some semblance of closure to the family and friends of Mr. Macnab, as well as to the community," Greeno said.

'Someone needs to be caught'

It's taken six months for Macnab to recover from the initial trauma of her son's shooting death.

"My son didn't just die. He was murdered," she said.

She has two daughters: one is 23, and one is 3.

"My 23-year-old lost her best friend … my three-year-old lost her hero," she said. "Watching a three-year-old grieve is awful."

After learning about her son's murder, she says at first, she wasn't focused on who did it.

But now, as her son's killers remain at large, Macnab says she wants to see them caught.

Police have said it was a targeted shooting. 

"Now, I can see someone needs to be caught. It's for Isaiah but these are also dangerous people. Someone that could do something like that in broad daylight, if it wasn't their first time, you know that's scary. If it was their first time, they're going to do it again," she said.

"He was our dude. He was our hero. He just had such a lively personality and we miss him. We miss his jokes, his comfort, he would always help us, he was always there for us," she said.

"We're never going to be the same."

Listen to the interview with Kelly Macnab: