Community role model turned drug-dealing killer gets life with no parole for 18 years

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This article was published 16/01/2025 (281 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A “Jekyll-and-Hyde character” who was considered a role model in his community was sentenced to life in prison Thursday without the possibility of parole for 18 years for fatally shooting a gang rival on a downtown Winnipeg street.

Gunni Abdi Hassen, 27, was convicted last fall of second-degree murder in the death of Abdulwasi Ahmed, 30, who was shot in the forehead on Garry Street on Feb. 9, 2022, during the shootout sparked by a beef over drug turf.

Hassen, clad in a bow tie, dark suit and shackled feet, showed no visible emotion as he heard his sentence read.

“He was seen as a stellar citizen by family and friends, but as a drug-dealing killer by facts established at trial,” said Court of King’s Bench Justice Chris Martin of the difficulty of assessing Hassen’s character when determining his parole ineligibility.

The sentence was just shy of the 20 years sought by Crown prosecutor Libby Standil. The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life without a shot at parole for 10 years.

Hassen came to the country as an Eritrean refugee at age 11 and did well academically and socially.

He worked for the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba — which, ironically, included being a facilitator for a gang prevention program, said Martin — and was interested in becoming a firefighter.

He was described as a community-minded person in support letters filed in court, with people who knew him expressing shock at the charge.

Standil argued those plaudits were a smokescreen to obscure who he really was.

Defence lawyer Evan Roitenberg had asked for 12 years of parole ineligibility, arguing Hassen fell into a lifestyle “that he wasn’t proud of” and hid it from friends, family and co-workers out of shame, having fallen prey to the lure of easy money and the “siren song” of unsavoury acquaintances.

“In the end, Mr. Hassen appears to be a Jekyll-and-Hyde character,” said Martin. “Even in court, sitting in the prisoner’s box wearing a suit and bow tie, he was well dressed and mannered … with a gentle … demeanor.”

Martin said that was the opposite of the expression shown in his 2022 police photo and his criminal lifestyle as a “menacing drug dealer who was able to arm himself with a loaded handgun, and for unknown reasons, chose … to kill another east African gangster in a wild shootout.”

At trial, court heard evidence that the two gangs had been sparring over drug dealing and there had been “tit-for-tat violence and killings” since 2019.

Hassen and other members of his gang were doing dial-a-dealer drug sales, packaging crack cocaine in a McDermot Avenue apartment suite, before two caretakers there would drive them to drug deals the night of the slaying, court heard.

As the gang members were being driven to a drug deal, Hassen heard a rival gang, which included Ahmed, was downtown.

He told the caretaker to drive them to Fort Street, where he and the other gang member got out and crept up through alleyways to Ahmed and four other men. At that point, around 3:30 a.m., shooting broke out.

It’s unknown who fired the first shots.

Hassen fled the scene and was arrested by Winnipeg police a month later.

Hassen had been charged with first-degree murder but the judge found him guilty of second-degree murder, saying the facts of the case didn’t meet the threshold for a first-degree conviction.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca