Accused in drive-by slaying were selling cocaine, trial told
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/02/2019 (1862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A Court of Queen’s Bench judge is expected to deliver a verdict next month on whether two accused killers are guilty in a drive-by shooting that killed a 32-year-old Edmonton man on a Winnipeg street.
Julian Donally Telfer and Paige Eveline Crossman have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder after the Nov. 26, 2016, shooting killed Theodoros “Teddy” Belayneh and injured another man in the same car around 3 a.m. near the intersection of Donald Street and Stradbrook Avenue.
On Friday, Toronto defence lawyers Jennifer Penman — representing Telfer — and Annamaria Enenajor — representing Crossman — argued the accused were not guilty in the homicide but were cooking and selling crack cocaine while police were investigating them for murder. Their behaviour or their conversations that investigators picked up on surveillance and wiretaps for the Crown to present as evidence of their guilt can be explained by their involvement in the drug trade, the defence argued.
The Crown’s theory is that Belayneh punched Telfer at the Reset Ultralounge nightclub earlier that night, and then Telfer and Crossman followed the victim’s vehicle in the lead-up to the shooting. The prosecution argues Crossman was driving and Telfer was the shooter, rolling down the window and pointing the gun from the backseat. None of the people who witnessed the shooting saw the shooter or who was driving the car. No gun was found.
Crossman wasn’t at the bar with Telfer earlier that night, and there are no cellphone records to show he communicated with her that night. Court heard he mistakenly sent texts to another friend asking about parking, which the Crown argued were meant for Crossman. But she was “completely ignorant of any conflict Telfer may have had,” her defence lawyer argued. Enenajor said Crossman can’t be found guilty of first-degree murder unless Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Chris Martin believes she either was the shooter or knew about someone else’s murderous intent and did something to help make it happen.
“There is no evidence of what she knew in advance of the shooting,” Enenajor argued.
For more than two months after the shooting, Winnipeg Police Service investigators had Telfer and Crossman under surveillance. They wiretapped their phones and installed probes in their apartments and vehicles to record their conversations. Investigators spent hundreds of hours listening to the wiretap recordings, creating transcripts and selecting the soundbites most pertinent to the Crown’s case. Some of the recordings, which were played in court, are difficult to hear and the transcripts are not evidence before the court. It’s up to Martin to decide what he hears, and Crown prosecutors argue the judge should rely on testimony from one of the investigating officers who repeatedly reviewed the audio to help him understand.
The defence lawyers disputed the content and context of many of the recorded conversations, suggesting Telfer and Crossman were at various points playing videogames or discussing a hip-hop website rather than talking about the shooting. Certain parts of the audio are “simply inaudible,” Penman argued.
“You don’t hear ‘that (racial slur) attacked me’… You don’t hear ‘toss me back, I blow up the streets,'” she said, referring to statements police attributed to Telfer after listening to the recordings.
“Words are being guessed at and put in to fit a theory,” Penman argued.
Martin is set to deliver his verdict March 19.
katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Katie May
Reporter
Katie May is a general-assignment reporter for the Free Press.