Accused says he found victim dead

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This article was published 14/11/2019 (2298 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man found hiding in an apartment where Mustafa Peyawary had been found slain hours earlier told a jury Thursday the victim had been killed before his arrival.

Ahamed Ismail said he had just returned to the Killarney Avenue residence to discover Peyawary “unconscious or possibly dead” on the living room floor, when he heard police banging on the apartment door.

“I was freaking out… I was in shock figuring what to do,” Ismail said of his “split-second” decision to hide in a closet.

Jurors had been told it was another four hours before a Winnipeg police officer discovered Ismail’s presence in the apartment and arrested him.

Ismail, 32, and three co-accused — Aram Soroush, 27, Damir Kulic, 29, and Matthew Marjanovic, 31 — are all charged with first-degree murder in connection with the killing that occurred on Aug. 13, 2017.

Prosecutors allege the four rented the apartment that day for the purpose of assaulting Peyawary, 29.

Ismail said he and Soroush, a longtime friend, and Kulic, a recent acquaintance, spent the weekend at a Calgary music festival, then drove to Winnipeg, where he and Soroush got to work “networking” and making contacts for their illegal marijuana operation.

The group connected with Marjanovic, who Ismail said he had met months earlier through one of his drug contacts.

Ismail said Marjanovic was in the process of moving, and the group decided to rent the Killarney Avenue apartment for all of them to stay at, as it would be cheaper than a hotel.

Jurors have been shown video footage of the four visiting a Home Depot earlier that day and purchasing cleaning supplies and garbage bags, items prosecutors allege they intended to use to clean up after the killing.

Ismail testified he purchased the supplies as a favour to Marjanovic, because they did not know how clean the apartment would be.

Ismail said he had left the apartment around 8:30 p.m. “to get some munchies,” when he struck up a conversation with a woman sitting in a car across the street. The two drove to a nearby park where Ismail smoked a joint and the woman smoked methamphetamine, he said.

When he returned to the apartment building more than an hour later, he checked his cellphone and noticed several missed calls from Soroush, Ismail said.

“I called him back, and he was kind of panicky,” he testified. “He said there was a fight and that he got out of there.”

Ismail said he went to the apartment with the intention of picking up his belongings and was greeted at the door by loud music and the smell of bleach. When he went inside, he saw a man on the living room floor with his legs and wrists bound and something covering his head, Ismail said.

Ismail said he checked the man for a pulse and could not detect one.

He said he then saw Kulic, who told Ismail he was just in the bathroom. “He said, ‘What happened?’ I said, ‘How should I know? I just got here.’ He was in just as much shock as me.”

When police banged on the door seconds later, Kulic retreated to a hallway closet and Ismail to a bedroom closet.

Jurors have heard Kulic was arrested a short time later.

Ismail said he knew Peyawary by name as a possible past drug contact, but had not met him in person. He said it was his understanding there was to be a meeting with Peyawary the night he was killed.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca