Family still unable to accept verdict in murder trial
Two of four men originally charged in man’s death acquitted in November
The relatives of a young man who was murdered in Côte-des-Neiges say they are still reeling over a jury’s decision last month to acquit two of the four men who were charged with causing his death.
“First, my son died. Second, justice killed my family. My family is frozen now,” Hanim Sen, the mother of Fehmi Sen, said on Thursday at the Montreal courthouse during a sentence hearing for one of two men who pleaded guilty to charges related to the same case.
She testified before Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer with the help of a Turkish interpreter.
“I’m so empty now. I wish God would do something.”
On May 30, 2013, Fehmi Sen, 28, was shot on Appleton St. near Kent Park in what the police and the Crown always believed was a case of mistaken identity. Two men who were tried for first-degree murder earlier this year — Rakesh Jankie and Marlon Henry, both 28 — were alleged to have gotten into an argument with people Sen knew the night before he was killed. The following night, someone riding in a Lincoln Navigator shot Sen.
In November, Shorn Carr, 35, admitted he was behind the wheel of the Navigator and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The trial of Jankie and Henry began in January and on Feb. 25, the jury found both men not guilty. On Thursday, Cournoyer heard arguments on what sentence Carr should receive. But before recommendations were made, Sen’s mother and his sister said they are very upset with the jury’s decision.
“I don’t accept the decision that was made in (Fehmi’s) case. My whole family was disappointed. Justice wasn’t served,” said the sister (who asked that her name not be published). “It was like the jury congratulated (Jankie and Henry). I will never accept this situation.”
Carr’s lawyer, Martin Latour, underlined the family’s anguish while arguing his client should be sentenced to a prison term that works out to the equivalent of the time he has served — six years and six months — while awaiting the outcome of his case.
“When I hear things like ‘justice killed my family,’ I can’t underline enough the merits of Mr. Carr’s guilty plea,” Latour said while making the argument that at least his client’s admission offers the family some form of closure.
He also argued that there was no evidence presented at trial as to what was said inside the Navigator before Sen was killed.
Prosecutor Yasaman Jahanbakhsh characterized Carr’s role as that of a “getaway driver.” But Cournoyer, the presiding judge in the jury trial, corrected her by saying: “getaway and get there, too.” It was reference to how Carr drove the Navigator around the park twice and backed it up before Sen was shot.
Jahanbakhsh asked that Carr be sentenced to an eight-year prison term.
The Crown’s theory is that someone inside the Navigator actually intended to kill a man named Volkan Demirel, a friend of Sen’s who was involved in the argument in Kent Park the night before the shooting. The argument was over a woman. Hours before Sen was killed, the two men who had argued with Demirel confronted Sen by mistake. Sen’s friends heard him say: “It’s not me. It’s not me,” just before he was shot in the chest.
Another man who was in the Navigator, Kshawn Rocque, 26, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder and was sentenced on Nov. 29 to time served, the equivalent of a 42-month prison term.
Cournoyer will deliver his decision on April 13.