The Nirmalendran brothers: a Metro Morning series

A spike in gun violence this summer caught authorities by surprise it was the biggest rise in Toronto's gun violence since 2012.

Metro Morning's Mary Wiens is exploring circumstances around one of those shootings in the series,The Nirmalendran Brothers: A Story of Love, Fear and Violence.

• How the Nirmalendran family became engulfed in tragedy
• A friend recalls a turning point in Nixon Nirmalendran's short life
• A week before the shootings,Nixon Nirmalendrantalked about going back to school
• Christopher Husbands' path to violence: a teacher's perspective

The Nirmalendran brothers came to Canada as young boys. They grew up in Regent Park, part of a wave of Sri Lankan immigrants in the mid-1990s.

Two of those brothers would be dead before they were 23. Nixon, the eldest, was killed in the Eaton's Centre shooting in 2012. Nisan, the middle brother, was shot in a Regent Park stairwell less than a year later.

In August, 2015, the third and only living brother was arrested. Nirusan Nirmalendran has been charged in connection with a spray of bullets fired from a passing car.

This series explores how the three brothers got caught up in gun violence from such a young age.