Star witness in gang killing was charged with murder
Young woman was spared prosecution, now testifying against former boyfriend
The young woman on the stand at Jeffrey Dondji's murder trial isn't your ordinary star witness.
Not only billed as the eyewitness to the 2020 gangland shooting of Mohamed Hassan, 21, the young woman also brought the gun for the accused killer, skipped town, then lied to police about it.
Just 17 at the time, she was charged with first-degree murder, but she has been spared prosecution and is now testifying against her then boyfriend Dondji.
The Crown's star witness told court Thursday she was going to braid Hassan's hair at a park in Ottawa's east end, only she brought her boyfriend's gun in a brown bag and put it in the back seat of her driver's car before she went to meet Hassan.
Next thing she knew, she testified, Dondji got in the car and she got out to do Hassan's hair and the car took off.
Minutes later, as the young woman and Hassan walked down a wooded path behind Collège catholique Samuel-genest, she recalled hearing a footstep behind them and then a gunshot so loud that her ears were ringing long after. She looked back and saw Dondji pointing a gun with his finger over his face mask in a gesture she took as, “Shush.”
Hassan fell face-first on the path after being shot in the back of the head at almost point-blank range. His body was dragged just off the path and into the edge of the woods.
There was a pool of blood on the path, and the body was missing parts of its head, with arms splayed.
“I was in shock and I was scared and didn't know what to do. I ran down the path to the park. It felt like I was on a cloud. The gunshot was so loud. I was just crying. I was a frantic mess,” the young woman told the jury.
When she got to the park, she said it was weird that everyone else seemed normal. Kids were playing at the splash pad, others were playing basketball and families were at picnic tables.
She said it was as if nobody had heard the gunshot. She sat down, but didn't call 911. Instead, she texted a friend saying, “Scar (nickname for Dondji) just killed somebody.”
Her driver picked her up five minutes later, but to her it seemed much longer. She was screaming in the car and an older man in the front passenger seat told her to calm down before taking her phone.
The star witness's identity is shielded by law because she was a minor at the time of the killing. She did hair for work, but went back to dealing crack when she met Dondji, her boyfriend back in 2020.
The police theory, adopted by prosecutors, is that Hassan was shot in a revenge killing that was a year and a half in the making. Dondji was exacting revenge in the name of a friend who was shot at the Burger King restaurant on Montreal Road in Vanier.
Hassan's body was found around an hour after he was shot by a 12-year-old girl, who called 911.
Prosecutors are using the accused killer's own words against him to establish motive. Dondji is a rapper and the jury has heard some of his lyrics, which prosecutors say clearly show why he exacted bloody revenge.
Ottawa police found the lyrics on a piece of paper on Dondji's bedside table during a search, and a handwriting expert confirmed that the writing was Dondji's.
“It was Mr. Dondji's own hand that wrote the lyrics and spelled out the motive for the murder,” assistant Crown attorney François Dulude told the jury.
Dulude read the lyrics into court: “Told my (N-word) we just had to be patient
“I feel success coming keep it all decent
“I was in the cell when heard Scottie got shot and my mind went vacant
“Lost in my thoughts I had no orientation didn't know what to do so I had to seek guidance
“Use to be a vegan now I'm all about that beef when
“Broski got touched had to switch to mode kill.”