Moments after a prosecutor finished outlining the Crown’s case in the brazen shooting deaths of two men outside a downtown Toronto nightclub, a defence lawyer stood up to make a stunning admission to the jury.
His client did it.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Anna Tenhouse told the Superior Court jury about the evidence she planned to call to prove Abdirisaq Ali and Tanade Mohamed are guilty of the second-degree murder of Tyler McLean and Zemarai Khan Mohammed in the early hours of Oct. 1, 2017.
McLean and Mohammed, who were friends, were gunned down in the parking lot across from the Rebel nightclub on Polson Street shortly after 3 a.m., as hundreds of patrons poured outside onto the street.
In her opening address, Tenhouse told the jury that after Ali and Mohamed left the Port Lands venue, they got into a dispute with two valet parking attendants after refusing to pay the $30 fee to collect the black Dodge Durango SUV they had arrived in.
“We will show you video surveillance from the club that follows their departure. It will be up to you to decide whether the man in the white pants is Tanade Mohamed and the other man is Abdirisaq Ali,” Tenhouse said.
After the money was reluctantly paid, the two men waited for the valet to deliver their vehicle. At the same time, the victims were making their way to the parking lot when McLean got into a physical altercation with the man in the white pants, who threw a water bottle at him, Tenhouse said. A paid-duty police officer broke things up and ordered everyone away.
As the victims approached their vehicle, Tenhouse said, surveillance footage captures a flash of light — from the gun being fired — coming from the passenger window of the SUV.
Mohammed, 26, was shot in the head at close range and died immediately. He was also known as Amir Jamal.
Tenhouse said the footage then shows the man in the white pants leaving the SUV before two more gunshots were fired, one bullet fatally striking McLean in the chest. He was 25.
The SUV fled the parking lot at a high rate of speed and, for a while, was chased by a Toronto police cruiser.
Tenhouse told jurors that police were able to determine the identity — and addresses — of the two men by their ATM withdrawals inside the club: Ali lived in Toronto, Mohamed was from Edmonton.
After that, the police determined the Dodge Durango SUV had been rented at the airport and that Mohamed was recorded driving it out of the rental garage. Gunshot residue was found inside the SUV — as well as on a pair of his white pants. His DNA was also found on the water bottle found in the Rebel parking lot and on another water bottle found in the SUV.
Cellphone records associated to the accused men showed a large number of Google searches about the double shootings at the Rebel nightclub, and searches about car detailing and fingerprints.
Tenhouse concluded her opening by saying the prosecution is confident that, after hearing and seeing all the evidence, the jurors will find both men guilty of second-degree murder.
Then, in a surprise turn after morning recess — before a single witness had been called — defence lawyer Richard Posner told the jury that Mohamed, while wearing white pants, had fired the gun that killed McLean and Mohammed.
Defence lawyer Craig Bottomley then stood up to tell the jury his client, Ali, can be seen in surveillance footage wearing a sweatshirt with a distinctive logo on the front. Ali and Mohamed are both in their mid-20s.
Betsy Powell – Courts Reporter