Two men convicted of murder in 2020 beating death

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This article was published 28/12/2022 (1061 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A judge has convicted two men of second-degree murder following a trial that laid bare the violence pervading the city’s illegal drug trade.

Jesse James Daher, 30, and Evan Brightnose-Baker, 23, were found guilty in the October 2020 slaying of 29-year-old Mohamed Mohiadin Ahmed, whose battered and mutilated body was found a day later floating in the Red River.

Ahmed, his killers and many of the witnesses who testified at trial were all heavy drug users, their drug of choice being methamphetamine, said Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne. Some witnesses did not show up to testify at trial, while other who did were clearly reluctant to do so, he said.

“The evidence clearly demonstrated Winnipeg has a serious meth problem,” he said. “It is clear that all the witnesses involved in this drug lifestyle understand the code of the street — there is tremendous pressure to remain silent, to not co-operate with police or the prosecution, as co-operation or the perception of co-operation will have you labelled a rat… and that puts your health and safety at risk.”

Ahmed was killed at a drug “flophouse” on Royse Avenue. Colin Leiterman, who lived at the house, told court Ahmed and two other people were present when masked men forced their way into the house and told him and the others to go to the bedrooms as the men took Ahmed to the bathroom and assaulted him.

Leiterman said he could hear Ahmed screaming, “freaking out,” saying he “didn’t want to die.” Leiterman said he heard one of the men call Ahmed a “skinner,” street slang for a sex offender, and a “rat.”

After the men left, Leiterman said he found Ahmed in the bathtub, his head covered in blood, and his hands bound in front of his body. Leiterman left the house and returned the next day to dispose of Ahmed’s body, wrapping it in a tarp and then loading it on a wagon to take to his car. He drove to an area near the Canoe Club seniors home on Dunkirk Drive, where he dumped Ahmed’s body in the Red River, he said.

Leiterman did not identify Daher or Brightnose-Baker as Ahmed’s killers. Leiterman was initially charged with being an accessory to murder, but pleaded guilty to interfering with human remains and was sentenced last year to 18 months in jail.

An autopsy found Ahmed died as the result of multiple blunt force blows to the head, possibly inflicted with a toilet tank lid, and with force akin to a strong swing of a baseball bat. He also suffered stab wounds all over his body.

“The sheer number of the injuries suggests this was a prolonged attack,” Champagne said. “This was a targeted attack on Ahmed… he was assaulted in the living room, then forced into the bathroom where he was restrained, beaten, tortured and killed.”

In a statement to police six months after the killing, Brightnose-Baker’s then-girlfriend said she and Brightnose-Baker were asleep the night of the killing when Daher awakened Brightnose-Baker, telling him: “Get ready, let’s go.”

When the two men returned to the house the next day, Brightnose-Baker had blood on his clothes and threw out his shoes, the woman said. Daher, the woman told police, said: “We killed him. We killed Mo.”

The woman told police Brightnose-Baker and Daher had assaulted Ahmed on a previous occasion, believing he had ripped people off and was a “skinner.”

The two men “were acting like they were proud of what they did,” she told police.

Testifying in court, the woman claimed her drug use left her unsure if what she told police was true.

A second woman who was living in the same house as Daher in December 2020 said he told her details of the killing, said it was his “destiny” to kill Ahmed and that he was “proud” of what he did.

The woman said when police arrested her on an unrelated matter on Dec. 28 and released her that same day, she was raped and beaten by four of Daher’s friends over the belief she had ratted on him.

“She blames Daher for the rape,” Champagne said of the victim.

Two weeks later the woman was attempting to flee the city when she stopped at a friend’s house and was met by Daher, who lunged at her and shot her in the face with a pellet gun. The woman managed to break free and, after being treated at hospital, provided a statement to police.

Champagne said he found the woman to be a truthful witness, and that her evidence was consistent with the autopsy results.

“The more she was questioned, the stronger her evidence was,” Champagne said. “The most difficult witness to cross-examine is the witness who is telling the truth.”

Daher and Brightnose-Baker will be sentenced at a later date following the completion of court-ordered reports. The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca