Ottawa man convicted for 2022 mall stabbing that killed teen

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A jury found Mohamed Osman guilty of second-degree murder in the 2022 killing of 18-year-old Marcus Maloney on Wednesday.

The Crown had successfully argued that Osman, now 20, 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 Shopping Centre in east Ottawa.

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Family and supporters of Maloney cried as the guilty verdicts for second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault for stabbing two of Maloney’s friends were read to a packed courtroom.

Kathleen Wilson, Maloney’s godmother, said she had been bracing for a possible not-guilty verdict after the jury submitted several questions to the judge to clarify legal definitions of self-defence and provocation.

“I had it in my heart. I was trying to think about how I was going to deal with a not-guilty verdict,” Wilson said outside the courtroom. “To hear ‘guilty’ … It’s the best word I’ve heard in a long time.”

The 12-person jury was tasked with determining whether or not Osman had been 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 involves the death of another person that is neither planned nor deliberate, but rather results from the actions of the accused.

The sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with a chance of parole after a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 25. Osman’s sentence is to be handed down by Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean next week.

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Wilson took a moment to acknowledge Osman’s family after the verdict.

“I feel for her pain in this moment as well,” she said of Osman’s mother. “There’s lots of victims, not just on our side.”

The jury had been instructed to consider whether or not Osman was acting in self-defence, if he thought a friend of his was in imminent danger during the brawl between two groups of young men.

Osman admitted to stabbing Maloney and his two friends, but had pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and aggravated assault.

The Crown argued Osman “brought a knife to a fistfight,” escalating the altercation, when he ran into a Dollarama store, 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.

During the trial, jurors saw closed-circuit video of the altercation and were presented with a series of admissions from the defence, including that Osman was the individual seen on video, wearing a red “Playboy” hoodie, wielding the knife and stabbing Maloney and his two friends. Osman 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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Osman struck the knife seven centimetres 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.

“I’ve been waiting for this a long time,” said Jrake Armstrong, who had been with Maloney at the mall on that day two years ago and testified at the trial. He said his slain friend was his brother in every way except by blood, and he was satisfied with the guilty verdict.

“There’s no unseeing what I saw that day,” Armstrong said, “and it’s not fair.”

Many of Maloney’s friends and family now have tattoos of black roses, his favourite flowers, in his memory.

The jury additionally found Osman guilty of two counts of aggravated assault for stabbing Jacob Grant-Dallaire and Denis Plumb, who were both 20 at the time of the fight.

The jury deliberated on the three charges for approximately a day and a half. Deliberations were briefly derailed when a family member took a photo of a juror outside the courthouse, which defence lawyer Ewan Lyttle said was illegal under the Ontario Court of Justice Act.

The photo was deleted, and McLean instructed the jury to not let the incident impact their deliberations in any way.

— With files from Aedan Helmer

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