Ontario man who topped Canada’s most wanted list testifies at murder trial

The former most wanted fugitive from the BOLO (Be on the lookout) list of Canada’s top 25 most wanted people admitted at his second-degree murder trial Wednesday that he shot Craig MacDonald outside a Scarborough Boston Pizza restaurant on Oct. 13, 2021, but testified he never intended to kill him.

Abilaziz Mohamed told the judge-alone trial after a day and night of heavy drinking, he was attacked from behind as he was leaving the pizza restaurant where he had gone for a few drinks with a friend named Daniel.

He said his head hit the ground, felt somebody punch his forehead, put up his arms to block the punches and heard yelling but couldn’t make out the words. “I got up real quick. I was like ‘what just happened?’ I was confused,” Mohamed testified. He said his friend told him that it was the people from the other bar whom he had had an argument with a month before.

Mohamed testified he then noticed a woman yelling at him who seemed angry. “She’s telling me, ‘This is what you deserve. This is what you get, you did this in front of my son’ and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?”‘

Mohamed recalled that a month earlier, he and Daniel were at Danny’s pub in Scarborough celebrating his birthday when got into an argument with a man named Craig and a woman named Rupi. Mohamed said he offered to buy them shots and Craig and Rupi refused.

“Craig said, ‘Why are you spending your money like that?’ and I was like, ‘It’s none of your concern’.” Mohamed said Rupi got upset and he recalled them all leaving with her son. “She was saying that I was bothering her family,” Mohamed said. He testified that Rupi went and told the owner of Danny’s before Mohamed and Rupid were swearing at one another.

“She said, ‘You are doing this in front of my son,’ so I apologized to him.” Mohamed testified he didn’t think anything about the argument after they left.

Returning to questioning about the Boston Pizza on the night of the shooting, Mohamed explained when he got up from being punched, he realized the woman yelling at him was Rupi.

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He said he noticed his chain had broken and went back to his car, that his friend was driving and put the chain inside before walking towards the restaurant manager who was now in the parking lot. Mohamed testified Rupi was still yelling at him and while his friend was urging him to leave, he didn’t leave.

“She’s still yelling. I’m still like engaged with Rupi and she’s telling me, ‘Nobody likes you’.”

When his lawyer Tyler Smith asked Mohamed why he was still engaging with her, Mohamed replied, “Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking clear. I just wasn’t myself that night.”

He said it’s then he saw MacDonald running towards him with his hands in the air, yelling and recognized him from Danny’s.

“He was running at me, he was getting closer, I just reached into my pocket, I selected my firearm, I pulled the thing back and I just shot. I fired two shots. Everything happened so fast,” Mohammad said, adding the shot hit MacDonald in the chest before he took a few steps backward and heard Daniel yelling ‘let’s go.'”

Mohamed said the two jumped into the car and left. “I was just shocked. What just happened? I was driving away. I was calming down and I just realized something bad happened.” Mohamed said he passed out in the vehicle and woke up the next morning at 6:30 a.m. with Daniel still in the car. He said he still had the firearm which he had bought the month before for protection.

Mohamed testified in September 2021, he was robbed in the parking lot outside Danny’s Pub by two men carrying guns who took his money, his cellphone and the chain off his neck. He said he called a friend named Desmond and told him the situation and a few hours later, Desmond said he had something and to come meet him. Mohamed testified he bought a small 32 -calibre silver handgun $2,000. Mohamed testified after the robbery, he didn’t go out much because he was scared.

On the night of the shooting at Boston Pizza, he said he was carrying the gun in the right pocket of the bomber jacket he was wearing. When asked what he did with the gun after the shooting, Mohamed explained he called a friend named Yogi and asked him to come pick him up so he could “do something”. He said Yogi drove him to the area of Birchmount and Finch Avenue, where he dropped the firearm wrapped in a sweater and in a bag into a garbage bin.

Mohamed said he never surrendered to police. It wasn’t until April 2022 when he was in hospital for nine days where he was being treated for diabetes that he got arrested. As Global News reported exclusively at the time, Mohamed was recognized in an Ajax hospital after his picture was widely circulated by the media that day after being named Canada’s most wanted fugitive by the BOLO program.

During cross-examination, assistant Crown attorney Sean Hickey questioned why Mohamed did not call police and report the robbery outside Danny’s, after which he testified that he decided to arm himself with a gun. Hickey also questioned Mohamed on how he could afford to support his girlfriend and her three kids and own two cars.

Mohamed had earlier testified he wasn’t working and was considering going back to school. He said he spend a lot of time betting on sports. Mohamed explained “I used to sell drugs” and told Hickey it was his first gun. Mohamed admitted he had no gun permit and he had a court order banning him from having a gun.

“I’m going to suggest to you, you were in no way impaired by the consumption of alcohol at the time,” said Hickey. “That’s not true,” Mohammed replied.

Hickey also suggested that Mohamed was not carrying the gun with him at the time he got into the initial fight with MacDonald but when Mohamed tossed his chain in the car, he grabbed his gun which was inside the vehicle before walking back towards the Boston Pizza. Mohamed denied it.

Hickey said as Mohamed and MacDonald were having it out, screaming at one another, and MacDonald’s wife was shouting at him, Mohamed took the gun out of his pocket, pointed it at MacDonald, racked it and pulled the trigger.

“Not once but twice, directly at him,” said Hickey. Mohamed snapped back, “Not true.”

Hickey also suggested that Mohamed had no intention of calling police that night, even though he had been assaulted. Mohamed agreed, explaining, “I was going to go tell the manager about what happened so he could call police. I had no intention of shooting him, I just reacted.”

The trial continues.