High-profile cases going to court in 2018
The fatal shooting of a Calgary Stampeder; the gang-related slaying of a man on a city street; the killings of a Calgary woman and her young daughter.
Those are just three of the cases that will grab headlines in 2018, as they head to trial in Court of Queen’s Bench.
Nelson Lugela is set to stand trial in December for the shooting death of Stampeders defensive back Mylan Hicks, purported gang leader Nick Chan will face a jury in April in the killing of Kevin Anaya, and Edward Downey is set to go to trial in November for the slayings of Sara Baillie and her five-year-old daughter, Taliyah Marsman.
It will be Chan’s second murder trial in two years. Jurors acquitted him in March 2016 of first-degree murder for his alleged role in the New Year’s Day 2009 Bolsa restaurant triple murder.
Chan now stands accused of playing a role in the killing of nongang member Kevin Anaya, who was gunned down on a northeast Calgary street Aug. 9, 2008. He’s also accused of conspiring to murder rival gang member Kevin Bontagon, who was the intended target the day Anaya was gunned down.
Downey faces two charges of first-degree murder in the July 2016 deaths of Baillie and Taliyah.
Baillie was found dead in her Panamount Boulevard N.W. home on July 11 and an Amber Alert was issued when her daughter could not be located. The girl’s body was found on a rural property east of Chestermere three days later.
Lugela’s December trial will likely draw the most headlines, as it is set to begin just days after the 2018 Grey Cup game in Edmonton.
The beginning of the hearing was pushed back a week so it wouldn’t start the day after the championship, on the chance the Stampeders — some of whom will be called as witnesses in the trial — will be playing that day.
Lugela is charged with seconddegree murder in the shooting of Hicks outside the Marquee Beer Market on Macleod Trail on Sept. 25, 2016. He was committed to stand trial last June, when provincial court Judge Catherine Skene ruled there was sufficient evidence that a properly instructed jury could find him guilty as charged.
Hicks, 23, was from Detroit and had been on the Stampeders’ practice squad since the previous May.