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A jury has found 20-year-old Mohamed Osman guilty of second-degree murder in the 2022 killing of 18-year-old Marcus Maloney.
The Crown successfully argued Osman was the catalyst for “mayhem” that ensued after a fight broke out between two groups of young men on the afternoon of Sept. 16, 2022, inside the St. Laurent Mall in east Ottawa.
Family and supporters of the deceased cried as the guilty verdicts were read to a packed courtroom.
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The 12-person jury was tasked with determining whether or not Osman was guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter. The Criminal Code says second-degree murder is a murder that is not planned, but is deliberate, whereas manslaughter is the death of another person that is neither planned nor deliberate, but results from the actions of the accused.
The sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison, with a chance of parole after a maximum of 25 years.
The jury was instructed to consider whether or not Osman was acting in self defence, if he thought his friend was in imminent danger during a brawl between two groups of young men.
Jurors were shown CCTV video of the altercation and were presented with a series of admissions from the defence, including 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.
Maloney died of his injuries sustained from the stabbing. Osman struck the knife seven centimetres deep into Maloney’s upper chest, penetrated the 18-year-old’s chest cavity at the base of his neck, severing a major artery and puncturing his left lung.
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During closing arguments, Crown attorney John Semenoff said Osman escalated the fight when he ran into a Dollarama, stole a kitchen knife, concealed it on his hip, ducked past a security guard and ran back into the mall, where he almost instantly began stabbing Maloney, “plunging” the knife “to its full depths” into Maloney’s chest, close to his neck.
The jury additionally found Osman guilty of two counts of aggravated assault against Jacob Grant-Dallaire and Denis Plumb, who were both 20 at the time of the fight.
Osman, now 20, was 18 at the time of the brawl, and pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault at the outset of his jury trial last week, though he admitted to stabbing the three men.
More to come…
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