Family of shooter upset over conviction
A jury found Windsor’s Dia-eddin Hanan not guilty of second-degree murder, but guilty of manslaughter in the Dec. 23, 2015, shooting death of a London man.
Hanan’s lawyer, Christopher Uwagboe, told reporters later Thursday that the verdict of the 12 jurors, as well as their not-guilty finding on an attempted murder charge in the shooting of a second man that night, indicates they leaned toward his client’s argument he had acted in self-defence.
“Don’t worry, I’ll clear my name — this is not right,” Hanan said as he kissed his tearful wife and then waved goodbye as he was being led out of the courtroom by police and court security. He barely reacted as the court clerk read out the verdict, but his family and friends in the public gallery erupted in tears, some in anger.
The jury — 10 women and two men — began deliberations Wednesday afternoon and continued through much of Thursday before returning shortly before 4 p.m. to deliver a verdict to Superior Court Justice Kirk Munroe.
The jury had the option of finding Hanan guilty or innocent of the murder charge, or finding him guilty of manslaughter in the death of Alekesji Guzhavin, 30.
He was acquitted of an attempted murder charge in the shooting of Gregory Henriquez, 39, an American living in Windsor at the time who had accompanied Guzhavin to Hanan’s home that night and was left paralyzed.
The jury found Hanan guilty on two other counts — discharging a firearm with the intent to wound and possessing an illegal firearm.
The defence admitted during the four-week trial that Hanan shot the other two men in the back yard of his Oak Street home on a dark and rainy night, but he argued that he acted in self-defence in fear for his life. All three men at the deadly encounter had criminal records at the time.
After the judge thanked and then dismissed the jury, assistant Crown attorney George Spartinos asked Munroe to revoke Hanan’s bail and remand him into custody pending a sentencing hearing set for Jan. 13.
Uwagboe argued his client had been free on bail since 2016 with “zero issues” in the community.
The judge said Hanan had been granted bail at a time when the justice system still presumed him innocent.
“He’s no longer presumed to be innocent — he shot two people, one of them died … he used an illegal firearm,” said Munroe.
Given that a jury of citizens had found him guilty of manslaughter, “I don’t think that you can say he’s not a danger.”
Henriquez was the Crown’s main witness, while Hanan, now a father of three young children, testified in his own defence.
“It’s clear they didn’t believe Mr. Henriquez’s story,” Uwagboe said of the jurors dismissing the attempted murder charge.
Henriquez had testified he was simply giving Guzhavin a ride to a rendezvous with Hanan to borrow money. According to Hanan, the two larger men came unannounced to his home to shake him down for money. Unsatisfied with his offer of $300 in the driveway and his sense of a subsequent threat they posed to his family, he testified, he wrestled a gun free from Guzhavin and began shooting wildly into the dark.
A pathologist testified Guzhavin suffered seven gunshot wounds — three of them potentially fatal — and Henriquez suffered three gunshot injuries.
In his closing arguments to the jury, Spartinos described it as “a remarkable display of marksmanship” and simply unbelievable.
“He’s obviously disappointed — my client’s position is he acted in self-defence,” said Uwagboe, who described the victim as someone “known to be a gun trafficker” with a record of violence and, at the time of his death, free on bail after being charged with two counts of attempted murder for a drive-by shooting on Howard Avenue a few months earlier.
A wide range of penalties is possible on a manslaughter conviction, up to life in prison. Using a firearm with the intent to wound means the minimum sentence Hanan is facing is five years in prison.
The two assistant Crown attorneys who argued the case said they wouldn’t comment to media ahead of Hanan’s sentencing. Uwagboe suggested to reporters that an appeal of the conviction is possible.