For the first time Thursday, jurors at a B.C. murder trial heard details of the police operation to arrest the accused killer.
Ibrahim Ali has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the July 18, 2017. killing of a young teen girl. The victim’s identity is protected by a publication ban.
On Sept. 7, 2018, more than a year after the victim’s body was found partially clothed in a wooded area of Burnaby’s Central Park, an RCMP strike force was given an arrest briefing, the court heard.
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team provided Burnaby Mounties with a target package that included a photo of Ali, Const. Jason Cutler testified.
The court heard that police planned to arrest Ali in a vehicle stop, and were driving on Burnaby’s Imperial Street with lights and sirens activated when Cutler spotted the suspect’s Dodge Caravan and forced it to stop.
There were four people inside, Cutler told the court, adding that he walked up to the vehicle and told Ali to keep his hands where he could see them.
“I walked back up to the passenger window and notified Mr. Ali, told him he was under arrest for murder and to step out of the vehicle and show me his hands,” Cutler told the court.
Cutler told the jury Ali was cooperative and did not struggle.
He said he read Ali his rights in English, then asked him if he understood.
Ali responded “no English,” he said, at which point Ali was handcuffed and taken to the Burnaby RCMP detachment.
Two other witnesses, an police officer and a building manager, also testified Thursday in relation to a video timeline of the teen’s movements the day she disappeared.
The victim was last seen leaving her apartment building at 6:02 pm on July 18. She lived across the street from the park where she was ultimately found dead just hours later.
Crown prosecutors allege Ali grabbed the victim as she walked in the park and dragged her into the bushes where he fatally strangled her in the course of sexually assaulting her.
The pathologist who conducted her autopsy has testified he was “certain” she died of strangulation and also described injuries on her body including bruising, scraping and tearing on the back of her head, as well as to her face, arms and legs.
On Wednesday, the jury heard from an RCMP forensics expert who described finding semen and sperm inside the girl’s body.
The trial is slated to resume Friday.
— with files from Rumina Daya