Teen ‘freaked out’ after shots, trial hears
Youth charged with three counts of attempted murder after incident outside Burnaby townhouse
A Burnaby teen says she “freaked out” when she heard the sounds of what she thought were gunshots and her injured boyfriend came running toward her at the townhouse where she lived.
Mickieh Kufaitandara, 19, described the shooting incident Monday at the trial of a teen who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.
She told a judge that before the November 2016 shooting she and her boyfriend, Samson Serjohn, were preparing to leave the townhouse in the 7100-block 14th Avenue in Burnaby and go for breakfast. There was a knock on the door and when she went to the door, the accused, who was 16 years old at the time, appeared before her and asked her if he could speak to Serjohn, Kufaitandara told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman.
Under questioning from Crown counsel Hank Reiner, she said that both she and Serjohn knew the accused from prior meetings. Serjohn left the townhouse to go with the accused and she closed the door and picked up her cellphone, she said.
“I just heard, pop, pop. It was more than three, but I don’t really know. Then I froze and then I just freaked out.”
“Did you recognize it as being gunshots,” said Reiner.
“I was unsure, but in a way I thought it was,” said Kufaitandara. “I was just so confused.”
The Crown witness said she opened the door and after about five seconds saw her boyfriend running toward her, calling her name. When Serjohn got to the townhouse, he collapsed, she said.
“He was lifting up his shirt and I saw his bullet wound. He was just making sounds, like ah,” she said.
Kufaitandara said Serjohn showed her another bullet wound on his back that was “bleeding hard.”
Her mother was with her and asked her to call 911, but she was unable to do so, she said: “I was panicking. I told her to call.”
Before the shooting, Serjohn and the accused were “talking nicely” and appeared to have no issues, she said.
Scott Wright, a lawyer for the accused, during cross-examination pointed out a number of inconsistencies between Kufaitandara’s statements to police and her testimony at trial.
Serjohn was shot twice in the torso and required emergency surgery to his abdomen. Two bullets and six shell casings were recovered from the crime scene by the RCMP. Two bullets struck nearby residences.
On Jan. 5, 2017, the accused was arrested in Surrey by members of the Burnaby RCMP for the attempted murder of Serjohn. At the time of his arrest he was found to be in possession of a Glock pistol that was later forensically linked to the Burnaby shooting and a second shooting a month later in Vancouver for which the accused also faces charges.
The Crown’s theory is that before the second shooting the accused had spoken by phone to a youth charged in the murder of a man at Burnaby in 2014. The accused allegedly conspired to murder Khurram Dar, a witness at the scene of the fatal shooting of Aladdin Ramadan.
On Dec. 20, 2016, the accused is alleged to have gone to Dar’s home in Vancouver. When the accused arrived at the home and knocked on the door, it was answered by Dar’s mother, Hamara Jat, according to the Crown. After being told that Dar was not home, the accused allegedly shot the mother multiple times at close range, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down.
The victim identified the accused as the shooter from a photo-pack lineup conducted after the accused’s arrest, according to the Crown. The trial continues.
The youth who was charged with murdering Ramadan was last year convicted of the lesser offence of manslaughter.