A community came together at a rec centre in the West End on Monday night to mourn the loss of a 20-year-old, who died after being shot outside the Windsor Hotel early Sunday morning.

Police identified the victim, Yassin Abdu Ahmed, earlier on Monday. He was one of three males shot in what police said was not a random exchange.

The other two were taken to hospital in critical condition.

At the event held Monday night, a support circle organized by his former employer the Spence Neighbourhood Association, Ahmed was remembered for touching the lives of many in the Spence and West Broadway neighbourhoods.

Up until a few months ago, he was a youth worker with Spence who facilitated programming at the Magnus Eliason Recreation Centre and interacted with kids.

At the time of his death, he was working as a youth worker in a similar role with the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre.

That organization’s executive director, Lawrence Mulhall, said Ahmed had a very positive effect on kids.

“The youth that I brought over here, on the way here we were just talking about -- and they’re 13, 14, 15 -- and they were saying that there was never a time that he didn’t have a smile on his face, and was always positive about life,” Mulhall said.

He said Ahmed was skilled when it came to communicating with kids, and more kids were showing up to their programming since he began facilitating sports programming there.

He said the loss is having an impact on the youth.

“They were saying they don’t want to believe it. They can’t look at a picture of him without tears swelling up in their eyes.

“In the short time that he was with us, he made such a big impact with them,” said Mulhall.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise funds for his parents. The fund’s organizer wrote that Ahmed was born in a refugee camp in Sudan after fleeing conflict in Somalia, before his family came to Canada.

NO ARRESTS MADE

No arrests have been made in connection with the shooting death, which police said began with a confrontation between two groups inside the hotel that spilled out into Garry Street.

“I don’t know any of the details, I just know what he meant to us and the kids in our centre,” said Mulhall.

-With files from CTV’s Renee Rodgers and Mike Arsenault