Ex-Tim Hortons employee testifies at sexual assault trial

Teen ‘was in trouble and needed help,’ former restaurant worker says of November 2018 incident

A former George Street Tim Hortons employee says she went against company policy and allowed a teen girl inside the restaurant after hours because she could tell the girl was upset.

“She was crying,” Tamara Quibell testified Thursday at Mostafa Alkhalil’s sexual assault and forcible confinement trial that continued in the Superior Court of Justice in Peterborough.

Alkhalil is accused of forcing a teen girl to perform oral sex in the back of his van in the early morning hours of Nov. 11, 2018, after he offered her a ride.

According to the teen, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, she had just relocated to Peterborough in the winter of 2018, and ran away from her group home around 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 10, 2018.

The teen said she made her way downtown and wandered the unknown streets for several hours, using free Wi-Fi at businesses to speak with friends over the internet, before accepting a ride from strangers to the Tim Hortons on George Street, which was closed to indoor dinning.

At about 3:30 a.m., the accused pulled up in his van and offered her a ride. The teen accepted, hoping the man would drive her to another Tim Hortons that was open so she could warm up inside and continue to talk to friends.

During the ride that lasted about 40 minutes, the teen told an officer during an interview that the accused first tried to hold her hand, which she thought was normal and perhaps a cultural act of kindness because the man was Arabic.

Next, she reported the man started to touch her face and play with her hair, and asked if she liked sex. She says she told the man, ‘No, I don’t,’ but the man acted like he didn’t understand, and asked her to speak into a translator app.

Lastly, she told police things escalated when the accused parked his van in the parking lot of an apartment building. It was there, the teen said the man grabbed her face and started kissing her, before taking off her clothes and forcing her to have oral sex.

After the reported sexual assault, Alkhalil brought the teen back to the Tim Hortons that he picked her up at.

“She seemed very upset,” Quibell told the court, adding a car pulled up to the entrance while she let the teen in and asked if she was OK. “I could tell she was in trouble and needed help.”

Once inside the restaurant, Quibell said the teen told her she had been in a vehicle with a stranger. Quibell asked the teen where her parents were and the teen told her she had ran away from her group home. The police were called and the teen was picked up by a staff member of the group home.

Quibell, who gave a statement to police about a year after the morning in question, admitted in crossexamination that she didn’t remember much of the conversation with the teen, but recalled the girl being visibly upset and not wanting to talk about what had happened.

“I remember at the time being concerned about the girl,” Quibell added.

Assistant Crown attorney Lisa Wannamaker closed the prosecution’s case by entering an agreed statement of facts that DNA found on the teen’s neck belonged to the accused.

At the end of the day, Alkhalil’s lawyer, Nabeel Sheiban, called his client to the witness stand to testify in his own defence. Through an interpreter, the accused answered questions from his lawyer in Arabic. Alkhalil admitted he accepted oral sex from the teen, but denied that he sexually assaulted or forced her to stay in the van.

Sheiban continued his chief examination of Alkhalil on Friday.

Mostafa Alkhalil is accused of forcing a teen girl to perform oral sex in the back of his van in the early morning hours of Nov. 11, 2018, after he offered her a ride