Shooting victim said he would ‘hit the big time’ with pot deal
Fouad Nayel boasted to friends he was about to “hit the big time” with an impending pot deal in the days before he disappeared.
Those friends were some of the last people to see Nayel alive, and they are now testifying in the first-degree murder trial of Adam Picard, accused of shooting and killing Nayel over 17 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $30,000. Picard has pleaded not guilty. Nayel, 28, was killed on Father’s Day, June 17, 2012.
Two days earlier, Nayel and his close-knit group of friends from Barrhaven were out on the town.
During that Friday night, Nayel asked his friends if any of them would accompany him on a drive to Petawawa that Sunday. He offered to pay them $200 to $250 for their trouble. No one accepted, according to close friend Anthony Zeck.
Zeck’s testimony began Friday morning, but was halted as Crown prosecutors raised an objection to a line of questioning from defence lawyer Michael Crystal.
Zeck testified that, on the day after Nayel’s disappearance, when Nayel failed to show up for work, he spoke with the supervisor of Nayel’s construction crew and asked for the names his crewmates. Some of Nayel’s co-workers constructed concrete curbs and sidewalks.
Before the jury was excused for the weekend, Crystal revealed to the jury that some of Nayel’s remains were found “encased in cement.”
He listed several tools, including a mixing basin, shovel and pickaxe found by investigators where Nayel’s remains were discovered, five months after his disappearance, in a shallow grave off Norton Road near Calabogie.
As Picard’s trial resumed Monday, the cross-examination focused on the last time Zeck had seen his friend, on the Friday night two days before he was killed.
Zeck said he saw Nayel talking that night with someone who looked “sketchy … like bad news.”
Zec ks aid he knew Nay el was selling marijuana in small quantities to friends, but was not aware of his involvement in any large-scale drug operations. Earlier that same Friday, as friends gathered for evening drinks at the Barrhaven home of Nayel and his parents, Nayel showed off a 10-pound bag of marijuana stashed under his bed.
Jeremy Trudel, a childhood friend of Nayel’s, testified he believed Nayel had stepped up a rung in the pot-dealing game and was “flipping pounds” — moving pounds at a time to select clients, rather than dealing smaller amounts in grams to multiple buyers. As Nayel showed Trudel the 10-pound bag, he boasted he would be in line to make $300 from each pound. Nayel told his friend about his plans to drive to Petawawa that Sunday to close the “big-time” deal.
Trudel didn’t know the name Adam Picard, but said he had heard Nayel mention “Pat’s cousin” in connection with the drug trade.
Pat Picard testified earlier that he introduced Nayel, his friend and construction co-worker, as a pot supplier to his cousin Adam Picard.
During cross-examination Monday, Crystal pointed to a statement that Trudel gave police in June and again in August 2012, following Nayel’s disappearance.
At that time, Trudel told police he thought the impending pot deal “was with someone in the military.”
Court has already heard the Crown’s theory that Picard, a former soldier, had established a drug-dealing operation between Ottawa and Thunder Bay, ferrying pounds of pot supplied by Nayel to Picard’s contacts in Thunder Bay.
The trial continues.