Justice Narissa Somji accepted the guilty plea and imposed a 10-year youth sentence on Jan. 9, with six years in custody and four years under strict conditions and supervision in the community.
The 17-year-old who shot Omar Al-Khalidi through the window of a parked car in February 2023 offered no motive or explanation for the “senseless and tragic” killing as he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in an Ottawa courtroom earlier this year.
The youth, who was about two months shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the “targeted” killing, cannot be identified under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He had no prior criminal record.
Justice Narissa Somji accepted the guilty plea and imposed a 10-year youth sentence on Jan. 9, but Somji raised concerns in her sentencing decision after the shooter “failed to proffer any meaningful explanation for his conduct.”
Somji wrote that she was “left to speculate whether the accused does not actually recall what transpired on the day of the murder because of the intoxicants he consumed, or because he fears reprisal from gangs in the Ottawa community should he say more as to how he came to have a gun and why he targeted the deceased.”
Al-Khalidi was 18 when he was shot as he sat in the passenger seat of a parked car in the Blair Court community housing complex near Coronation Park on the evening of Feb. 14, 2023.
“He had his whole life ahead of him and planned to go to university and study economics,” the judge wrote, describing Al-Khalidi as a “beautiful and kind” son and much-loved older brother to three young siblings.
“His murder, which was planned and deliberate, has devastated this family,” the judge wrote.
The shooter told a probation officer he was high on drugs that night and said “no one put him up to the killing,” though he “failed to explain how and why he had a gun.”
Evening Update
The youth claimed a car had pulled up to him earlier in the night and someone “made a comment to him.”
When he saw the car later, he said, he thought it was waiting for him.
“The only portion of his explanation I find even remotely reliable is that he was possibly under the influence of drugs at the time,” Somji wrote. “The rest of his narrative does not accord with the facts agreed upon by him and supported by the surveillance footage filed (in court).”
The youth was represented by criminal defence lawyer Michael Johnston.
Crown attorneys Matthew Geigen-Miller and Khorshid Rad filed a timeline of agreed facts, along with surveillance video that captured the killing and the shooter’s flight from the crime scene.
Video evidence also showed the desperate attempt to save Al-Khalidi’s life as his friend drove speedily to the emergency department of the nearby General campus of The Ottawa Hospital General. Doctors tried to revive Al-Khalidi, but he died in hospital of severe blood loss.
Investigators determined Al-Khalidi was shot from six feet away and the bullet perforated his torso.
According to the Crown’s timeline, the shooter ordered a taxi just before 6 p.m. that evening from a Russell Heights community housing complex on Russell Road and took the five-minute ride to the corner of Station Boulevard and Coronation Avenue.
His image was captured on the taxi’s onboard camera as he carried a backpack and wore a hoodie with a distinctive mask covering the lower half of his face.
He paid the taxi fare in cash and next appeared on surveillance cameras walking around the parking lot at the Station Boulevard housing complex between 6:02 and 6:27 p.m.
He didn’t visit any unit or communicate with anyone in the housing complex and didn’t stop or visit with anyone on the street, according to the timeline.
Al-Khalidi was dropped off by a friend at 6:27 p.m. at the housing complex’s south parking lot. He and another passenger were seen exiting the vehicle, which then drove away.
The other passenger walked away, while Al-Khalidi walked to a white Honda Civic and sat in the front passenger seat. The car had been parked in a visitor space about two minutes earlier.
The shooter was seen at 6:34 p.m. approaching the car from the passenger side, pointing a revolver and firing a single shot that struck Al-Khalidi through the window.
The killer immediately fled on foot toward Lindsay Street, leaving his grey backpack behind in the parking lot.
Residents saw him running up the street and into a backyard, where he dropped his gun on the other side of a backyard fence on adjoining Knox Crescent.
He was arrested six days later, according to the timeline, when he returned to the same neighbourhood and was spotted by residents walking up and down Lindsay Street, searching for the handgun.
He was unable to locate it before he was arrested by responding officers and charged with Al-Khalidi’s murder.
An Ottawa police search team recovered the Smith & Wesson .50-calibre revolver under some snow in the backyard of the same Knox Crescent home where he had been seen on the night of the shooting.
Forensic investigators later identified the shooter’s DNA on the handgun.
Somji imposed the maximum youth sentence of 10 years, with six years in custody and the remaining four years spent under strict conditions and supervision in the community.
The judge ordered the youth, who is now 19, to submit his DNA to a national databank and imposed a lifetime weapons ban, along with an order barring any communication with Al-Khalidi’s family.
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