TORONTO - Two Toronto men have been found not guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy at an outdoor birthday party.

Ephraim Brown had been allowed to stay up later than usual for the party when he was killed in the crossfire as shots rang out in the early hours of July 22, 2007.

A lawyer for one of the accused said the case had a "happy ending insofar as the two innocent men have been proven so."

But when the jury returned the not guilty verdicts Monday for Gregory Sappleton and Akiel Eubank, both 24, it set off emotional outbursts from Brown's family.

"You baby murderers," one of the boy's aunts screamed out in the courtroom.

Sappleton and Eubank embraced in court after the verdict came down.

"Unfortunately a boy is still dead and guns are still a problem in this city," Sappleton's lawyer, Edward Sapiano, said outside the court.

The jury heard that Eubank was a member of a gang called Five Point Generalz, and the Crown alleged Sappleton was a member of a rival gang -- Baghdad Crew.

"It's been three and a half years, you know, they've been painting us as bad people," Eubank said outside court. "Now it's over, we get to take our life back and do something constructive with it."

When asked what he'd do with his life, Sappleton said: "Make the better of it."

The case rested largely on the testimony of Brown's cousin, Kishauna Thomas, who identified Sappleton and Eubank as the men firing the guns.

"All you cowards who know the truth and did not step up, there's no forgiveness," Molly Brown, another of Ephraim's aunts, said outside court.

"We are suffering, our family is suffering."

Police have said Ephraim was enjoying the night with siblings and cousins at the birthday party for two 18-year-old girls when gatecrashers began arriving.

The crowd behind their Sheppard Ave. W townhouse complex in northwest Toronto swelled to as many as 70 people -- including some from rival gangs.

Around 1 a.m., as many as a dozen shots rang out in a passageway between the townhouses. At least one bullet tore through Ephraim's neck, fatally wounding the boy described by his family as a polite, basketball-loving joker.

The killing came just two months after Grade 9 student Jordan Manners, 15, was shot to death at his high school in the same region of the city.

It prompted reaction from the province, with Ontario's attorney general using the senseless death to renew calls for a federal ban on handguns.