Witness describes shooting in parking lot

At Mark Moore murder trial, man says he heard shots, saw flash from gun muzzle

As Abdel Tourabi stood on his balcony on the evening of Nov. 24, 2010, he saw a slow-moving silver Chrysler 300 and a black man standing in a parking lot.

Then, he testified in a Toronto courtroom Thursday, he heard gunshots and saw a muzzle flash by the driver’s side of the vehicle.

He backed away as the shots — about 14 or 15 — continued, he said.

When he looked again, he saw the Chrysler speed away, leaving a man lying in the Scarborough parking lot.

The jury has heard this man was Carl Cole, 45, which the Crown alleges was the fourth man gunned down by Mark Moore using the same gun.

Moore has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Cole, Jahmeel Spence, Courthney Facey and Mike James.

Of the four victims, the Crown al- leges the only previous connection was between Moore and Cole.

On the day Cole was shot, there were nine calls from a phone linked to Moore to Cole, prosecutor Sean Hickey told the court in his opening overview of the evidence.

Three days later, Moore texted an associate to say he “got him in the cedar that dude dat rob us,” Hickey said.

The Crown argues this text refers to Moore killing Cole in an area near Cedarbrae school.

On Thursday afternoon, Cole’s widow, Dorothy Cole, testified that the husband she’d been with for 27 years was known as a peacemaker.

She told the defence lawyer she would be surprised to learn Cole had been involved in a robbery. “That was not his nature,” she said.

Cole also testified that her husband drove a silver Chrysler 300, using it for his job driving patients to and from a physiotherapy clinic.

The province’s chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Michael Pollanen, also testified Thursday.

As he led the jury through the autopsies performed on the four men, Moore began to cry silently, tilting his head back to stem the tears.

Seated behind Moore in the court, Dorothy Cole and her two children were also in tears, as Pollanen testified that Cole was shot multiple times.

Pollanen told the jury Cole had 29 gunshot-related wounds; eight bullets were extracted from his body.

He could not say exactly how many times Cole was shot. He was also not able to say how far away the shooter was, except to note there was no evidence of shots fired from a very close range.

The trial continues.