Peter Khan and his wife were at Tropical Nights, a club on Morningside Avenue, near Sheppard, on May 7, 2022, when Khan and a friend stepped outside to drink one of the beers in the trunk of his car and to smoke a cigarette.
On the opening day of the second-degree murder and attempted murder trial for Jahvon Waldron, court heard an interaction in the parking lot between 36-year-old Khan and a man the Crown alleges to be Waldron turned deadly after Khan was robbed of the gold chain he was wearing.
Assistant Crown attorney Paul Kelly told jurors in his opening address that a Black male approached Khan and his friend around 3 a.m., wearing, among other clothing items, light jeans, black shoes and a black, puffy jacket. The man asked for a cigarette.
“He then proceeded to grab at and rip a long gold chain from the neck of Mr. Khan. Immediately after having done so, he shot Mr. Khan in the torso,” Kelly told the jury.
The shooter then walked towards another vehicle in the parking lot, metres away from Khan’s Mercedes where a man named Dante Roopchand was sitting in the driver’s seat.
Roopchand had also earlier been inside “Tropical Nights” and was waiting for a friend. Kelly said Roopchand wasn’t paying attention to what was happening in the vicinity of his car as the shooter approached because he was looking at his phone.
“The shooter proceeded to open the driver’s side front door of Mr. Roopchand’s car … The shooter then reached in and ripped off the gold chain Mr. Roopchand was wearing around his neck,” said Kelly.
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As Roopchand began to get up and out of the driver’s seat, the man in the black puffy jacket shot Roopchand as well. The single bullet pierced his arm and leg.
Both shootings were caught on CCTV video from Tropical Nights.
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Kelly told jurors that the shooter was seen leaving and arriving in a white Nissan Sentra with distinctive characteristics including a missing front licence plate and, most notably, a black driver’s side rear view mirror.
Roopchand and Khan were both rushed to hospital. Roopchand was treated and survived but Khan was not so lucky. He was pronounced dead in hospital from a gunshot wound to the chest.
The Crown’s first witness was a man who was robbed at gunpoint of his jewelry at about 1:15 a.m. on May 7, 2022, outside a Domino’s Pizza at 1880 Kennedy Rd. — less than two hours prior to the shootings outside Tropical Nights.
The 57-year-old construction worker said he was outside the pizza waiting for an Uber with his girlfriend after picking up his pizza when he was approached from behind. “I felt like somebody tug on the back of my chain,” said the witness.
He said suddenly a man walked in front of him and confronted him, telling him to “take it off”. When he resisted, the man yanked the chain until it broke, the pendant from the chain falling to the ground.
“He put it in his left pocket. He had a gun in his right hand,” said the robbery victim. He testified the man asked for his rings and said, “I swear to God I will kill you,” before pushing the gun to his stomach.
“He pumped the magazine just so I could see there was ammunition in the magazine. After that, the rings came off,” said the witness who said he also handed over his bracelet. All were 10-karat gold. He said the armed thief walked backwards to make sure he wasn’t going to follow him before walking off. The robbery victim said he then called the police.
When asked by Kelly how the suspect looked, the witness described him as a Black man with a lighter complexion than his, wearing a shiny black winter jacket with light blue jeans, with a medium build and roughly 27-28 years old. But said his hoodie was up and could only see flat corn rows along the side of his face. He also said the suspect had a similar Caribbean accent to his.
Surveillance video of the robbery was shown in court. During the interaction, a suspect wearing a mask can be seen holding a gun in his right hand before the witness hands over the jewelry. The suspect turns around and walks off.
Kelly told the jury that CCTV video from an adjacent plaza will be shown immediately before and after the robbery outside Domino’s. He said he would show it is consistent with the shootings outside Tropical Nights where you can see a male in light pants with a puffy jacket getting into a white Nissan and driving away. The Nissan again has a missing plate and most notably a black-coloured rear-view mirror, the same one the Crown will submit was seen less than two hours later outside Tropical Nights.
The Crown told jurors that that a bulletin to officers about the shootings outside Tropical Nights and the robbery at the Domino’s including a description of the suspect vehicle and the assailant. On May 8th, an officer observed a White Nissan with distinctive markings in the same plaza where the robbery had taken place outside of the Domino’s.
The officer also noticed a man wearing a black puffy coat. The man changed but later, after a brief foot pursuit in which the suspect jumped through back yards, Jahvon Waldron was arrested. The K9 unit was called in to retrace his steps and found a key fob belonging to a Nissan motor vehicle.
The keys were seized and ultimately another officer returned to the Nissan that remained parked in the Domino’s plaza from which the male fled. When the officer pressed the key fob, the lights for the vehicle turned on. They were the keys to that car — the same car that the Crown will submit was used in the shootings. That same car, a White Nissan Altima, had been registered to Jahvon Waldron’s brother who had been deceased for some time.
Kelly told the jury they will see CCTV video from Waldron’s mother’s apartment building on Rowena Drive that will capture a male wearing various incarnations of clothes that the Crown will submit is consistent with clothes worn by the shooter at Tropical Nights and with the male seen in the robbery outside the Domino’s. They will also see phone records allegedly linked Waldron to the times and locations of the shootings and robberies.
Waldron has pleaded not guilty. The trial continues.
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