Jury finds man guilty of manslaughter in 2018 killing
Ibrahim Khiar convicted of reduced charge in death of Marcel Teme
When police asked Ibrahim Khiar who shot him during a late-night brawl outside a fivestar downtown Toronto hotel in 2017, he did what you do in his world. He kept quiet.
And after he recovered from the bullet wound to his hip, rather than go to police for protection, he did what you do in his world: he bought a gun on the black market for $2,500. From whom? “Someone I met,” he testified in court, adding: “in my world, I can get anything you want.” At the time, he was on a lifetime firearms prohibition order.
So when he left his family’s Etobicoke apartment on Canada Day 2018 and headed downtown to an “urban party,” he tucked that gun into his waistband, just in case. Hours later, he said his survival instincts kicked in when confronted with a trash-talking stranger named Marcel Teme, 19, in Kensington Market. Khiar told the jury he believed Teme was armed and prepared to shoot him and his friends — a scenario rejected by prosecutors who noted no weapons of any kind were seen or found around Teme.
Fearing for his safety, Khiar said he discharged his firearm eight times, killing Teme and wounding three passersby.
“Just trying to stop him before he shoots me,” Khiar said, later summing up the incident with the shockingly flippant “S--t happens.”
Khiar’s lawyers, Marco Sciarra and Marco Forte, argued their client was acting in self-defence and should be acquitted of second-degree murder and all other charges, including discharging his gun recklessly.
On Wednesday afternoon, after deliberating for a day, a jury rejected that Khiar was acting in self-defence, but convicted him of the reduced charge of manslaughter, in addition to three counts of aggravated assault and weapons charges.
It’s likely the jury accepted the “provocation” defence, meaning they believed Khiar was provoked by the behaviour of the victim, Sciarra said minutes after the verdict was read out.
What only jurors will ever know is if they accepted the defence argument that Teme had a gun.
Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden rejected the defence request to admit evidence suggesting Teme possessed a black handgun in July 2017.
He also refused to allow the jury to hear about two text messages defence said showed him attempting to buy one four months before he was killed.
There was a lot jurors also weren’t told about Khiar, a 6foot-2-inch narcotics dealer who weighed 220 pounds and was 32 years old at the time he killed Teme. He’s now 36.
He still faces a first-degree murder charge for allegedly gunning down 24-year-old Jaunoi Christian as he stood in the doorway of a Queen Street nightclub. That killing took place on Feb. 8, 2019, while Khiar was on the lam for the Teme shooting. That trial is set for this fall.
Nor did the jury hear that Khiar is already serving a 14year sentence after pleading guilty this past March to possessing two loaded firearms along with a substantial quantity of heroin, MDMA, and the potentially super dangerous fentanyl and carfentanil — along with $15,000 from the proceeds of crime. Also recovered in his condo were more than 200 rounds of ammunition, devices used to make semi-automatic firearms fully automatic and other gun paraphernalia.
Unusually, the judge, anticipating the googlingo jurors that they will likely “find out some things that will surprise you a lot,” undoubtedly referring to Khiar’s outstanding murder charge and the fact he’s already serving a 14-year prison sentence.
But, the judge explained, the “culling” of such details was done to ensure Khiar was tried only on the charges he faced in this trial — not for other crimes he has done or might have done.
“This is not called the truth system, it’s the justice system,” Bawden stated.
This trial centred on the few minutes that happened in Kensington Market almost four years ago.
Crown attorneys Mary Humphrey and Liz Jackson said this case was about a teen who had too much to drink and was disrespectful to a man “who had a short fuse.” And the only evidence to suggest Teme threatened Khiar — or that he was carrying a gun — came from the accused, they argued. “Please don’t be conned by him and his lies,” Humphrey said during the Crown’s closing address.
Key to the defence was the need to explain why Khiar was armed with a loaded handgun that evening.
Their client described for the jury how, in the fall of 2017, he was shot during a late-night altercation outside the Thompson Hotel, as it was called then, on Wellington Street, while acting as a peacemaker. He was attempting to steer a drunken friend out of trouble when a stranger shot him.
Khiar remained stoic explaining both the incident and how he dealt with it by arming himself. He was no stranger to firearms or ammunition.
In 2015, he received a fourand-a-half year sentence for possessing two loaded handguns after being swept up in Project Traveler, the street gang investigation forever associated with late mayor Rob Ford.
On Canada Day evening 2018, Khiar testified, after briefly attending a downtown party, he and his friends gathered on a patio bar in Kensington, chatting about, among other things, the Toronto rapper Smoke Dawg, who had been fatally shot hours earlier on Queen Street West. They left that establishment around 10:17 p.m., heading south on Augusta Avenue, when they crossed paths with Teme, whom Khiar insisted was “strapped,” street slang for carrying a gun.
Prosecutor Jackson challenged Khiar’s account, which he delivered in monotone, without a trace of emotion.
“You shot at him without him pulling out a gun,” she said during cross-examination.
Khiar insisted he saw Teme “gripping a gun” and repeatedly stated he was “zoned out.”
“You seemed pretty zoned in when you made a decision to pull out a gun,” she responded.
“I don’t know, I just started shooting,” he said repeating that he was “zoned out” during those moments.
“Zoned out” is notably the same phrase Toronto shooter Christopher Husbands repeatedly used while explaining to a jury how he reacted while firing his gun in the food court of the Eaton Centre in 2012, killing two enemies and injuring innocent bystanders. Husbands’s defence lawyers argued he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after he was stabbed by one of the two victims. After a retrial, a jury only convicted him of two counts of manslaughter, along with other firearms offences.
Jurors were shown surveillance footage capturing the nighttime shooting from a distance.
During his closing address, Sciarra suggested it was “extremely suspicious” that the Crown presented no evidence regarding Teme’s background, nor did it call any of his companions that night as witnesses. He suggested the prosecution had portrayed Teme as a drunken 19 year old, when he was the aggressor who “pursued, accosted, threatened and assaulted” Khiar and his co-accused, Abdullahi Osman. Surveillance footage showed Teme punching Osman in the face.
As well, the defence lawyer played video segments showing Teme’s “mystery friend” who was first on the scene, and therefore had “every opportunity to remove Mr. Teme’s firearm prior to police arrival.” The friend also fled the scene and offered police no assistance, Sciarra noted. The prosecutors said this was a “red herring” and there was no evidence to support this alleged scenario.
Sciarra also asked the jury — who heard Khiar was wanted for months before his arrest — to understand that the reason he didn’t surrender right away was because he knew police would never believe his version of events. Khiar testified about being harassed by police as a young, Black male to understand why he feared police might shoot him.
During her cross-examination, Jackson played a video Khiar recorded in October 2018, where he stared into his cellphone camera addressing the authorities, wanting them to reverse the conviction of the man who shot him in 2017.
Staring into the camera, Khiar apologized that the man had been “falsely accused.”
Born in October 1985, Khiar came to Canada in 1995 with his family, who left Saudi Arabia via Italy.
His father wanted a better life for his family. He died in 2007. By then, his son was already in trouble after dropping out of Runnymede Collegiate.
During the trial, the judge agreed with defence that there was not enough evidence for the jury to convict Khiar’s coaccused, Osman, of being an accessory after the fact. The Crown had alleged he helped Khiar by driving him away from the murder scene.
After the ruling, Osman was led out of court in handcuffs to face other charges. When jurors returned to the courtroom, the judge told them they no longer had to consider his role that evening and they need not concern themselves with his absence.
Khiar will be sentenced at a future date.