Jury to consider intent as Mohamed Osman pleads not guilty to second-degree murder in mall stabbing

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Marcus Maloney was four days shy of his 19th birthday on Sept. 16, 2022, when he was fatally stabbed in the neck during the chaotic moments of a melee between two groups of teenagers at the St. Laurent Shopping Centre.

Maloney and two of his friends were stabbed in a matter of seconds as a fight broke out in front of the Dollarama store around 4:30 p.m. that day.

At the outset of his jury trial Tuesday, Mohamed Osman, who was 18 at the time, pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault, though he admitted he stabbed Maloney and his two friends.

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Assistant Crown attorneys Robin McLachlen and John Semenoff told the jury “it is not in dispute” that Osman wielded the kitchen knife he stole from the Dollarama, ducked past a security guard and stabbed Maloney, then stabbed the two friends who confronted him.

“This trial isn’t about who stabbed Marcus Maloney (and his friends). It’s all on video. Mohamed Osman stabbed these men,” McLachlen said in his opening address. “He stabbed them with a Sabatier kitchen knife he had taken from the Dollarama … This is not in dispute.”

Prosecutors said it was anticipated that Osman, represented by defence lawyers Ewan Lyttle and Biagio Del Greco, would claim he stabbed the three victims in self-defence or in the defence of his friend.

“This trial will be about the decisions Mr. Osman made,” McLachlen said. “His intentions, his reasons and his motivations for doing what he did.”

Jurors were shown CCTV video of the altercation and were presented with a series of admissions from the defence, including the admission that Osman was the one seen on video, wearing a red “Playboy” hoodie, wielding the knife and stabbing Maloney and his two friends. He also admitted he was seen on another video exiting the mall moments after the stabbing and tossing the knife into a trash compactor, where it was later recovered by police.

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McLachlen presented the jury with an outline of the facts that led to the deadly confrontation.

Maloney and his friends had gone to the St. Laurent mall “to stick up for a friend and co-worker” who had been assaulted by a group of teenagers on an OC Transpo bus the previous day.

The victim of that assault texted a friend asking for help in confronting the teenagers and said he knew they hung out at the mall. That friend recruited others, who in turn asked their friends to join them the next day. Maloney was one of the last to join.

He had a pocketknife concealed in his hoodie when the group of six friends arrived at the mall, while another friend also brought a knife and another had a backpack full of tools, including a box-cutter and a hammer.

“None of these knives or tools were used, seen, or even mentioned” before or during the melee, McLachlen told the jury.

The friends recognized one of the teenagers from the bus by his backpack, according to the Crown’s summary.

He was at the mall that day with Osman.

They started “jawing” with Osman’s friend outside the Dollarama, challenged him to a fight and called him a “p—y” when he asked them for time to gather more of his friends, McLachlen said.

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“Before the beginning of any physical altercation, Mr. Osman pulled a bandana over his face and went into the Dollarama. He looked around briefly and then selected a knife from the kitchen section,” McLachlen told the jury. “He removed the knife from its packaging, ducked past the security guard, concealing the knife at his hip.”

While Osman was briefly inside the store, a fight broke out between his friend and one of Maloney’s friends.

“Marcus Maloney was close by, but he did not physically engage with anyone,” McLachlen said.

Osman stepped out of the Dollarama and “immediately attacked Mr. Maloney with the knife in his right hand.”

Maloney appeared to block the first blow with his left arm, and, as he cocked his arm back, Osman struck again and stabbed Maloney in the lower neck.

The jury was also shown a frame-by-frame closeup of the killing blow captured by an eyewitness on a cellphone, which was later circulated on social media by an anonymous poster and promptly downloaded by homicide investigators.

The knife struck seven centimetres deep and penetrated Maloney’s chest cavity at the base of his neck, severing a major artery and puncturing his left lung.

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“He immediately started bleeding profusely down his arm and chest and looked frantically for help, but the help he received wasn’t enough,” McLachlen said. Maloney died of blood loss shortly after he was stabbed.

Osman was quickly confronted by two of Maloney’s friends, who were also stabbed before the group scattered.

One young man was stabbed twice in the collarbone area, and McLachlen told the jury a backpack strap may have saved him from more serious injuries.

Another friend of Maloney’s was stabbed once in the lower back and once in the shoulder blade.

McLachlen asked the jury to consider Osman’s intent and asked them to pay particular attention to “how the victims were stabbed and where they were stabbed.”

They were stabbed in the collarbone, neck and shoulder blade regions, McLachlen said, “all in potentially life-threatening areas of their bodies.”

Maloney’s mother, Kelly, could barely contain a cry in court as she heard testimony from paramedic Gregory Drummond, describing how the veteran paramedic arrived at the scene to tend to Maloney, who was already “vital signs absent.”

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He never regained a pulse as Drummond and a police officer tended to the stab wound and kept applying pressure until they arrived at The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus trauma bay.

Maloney was pronounced dead in hospital. His two friends had non-life-threatening injuries.

The jury will likely be called upon to consider the question of Osman’s intent, prosecutors said, and whether his actions were in self-defence or in defending his friend.

“Was Mr. Osman’s purpose in committing these stabbings in defence of himself or someone else? And, second, were the stabbings a reasonable use of force in the circumstances?” McLachlen said.

He also asked the jury to consider the “proportionality” of Osman’s actions and whether “there were other responses available” to him, such as police or security personnel in the vicinity who could have intervened.

“You’ll need to look at the circumstances that day in the St. Laurent mall at 4:30 p.m. and determine whether these circumstances warranted engaging in deadly force,” McLachlen said.

Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean is presiding over the trial, which is scheduled to last four weeks.

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ahelmer@postmedia.com

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