Alberta’s top court overturns conviction of Calgary man in double murder
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CALGARY – Alberta’s top court has quashed a Calgary man’s double murder conviction, citing flaws in the trial judge’s interpretation of evidence.
Gerald Benn was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder for the killings of Mohamed Shaikh and Abas Ibrahim in a vehicle in the northwest Calgary neighbourhood community of Sandstone in August 2020.
The trial judge didn’t find Benn guilty of attempted murder, believing the accused shot a third man in the vehicle but was unsure if he intended to kill the man.
The case centred on the identity of the shooter, as the trial judge found there was “no question” the man who was videotaped firing a gun into the vehicle killed Shaikh and Ibrahim. Benn was 23 when he was arrested a little more than a week after the killings.
At the 2023 trial, the judge found that circumstantial DNA and video evidence wouldn’t be grounds for a conviction individually, but as a pair were enough to find Benn guilty.
The Alberta Court of Appeal disagreed. In its decision, it says the trial judge leaned too heavily on the circumstantial evidence, placing Benn at the scene of the shooting.
It says Shaikh, Ibrahim and a third person were parked in a Nissan Altima on a residential street. An Infiniti with three people pulled in behind and parked.
One of the three in the Infiniti got in the Altima, and there was an interaction before Shaikh and that person started to wrestle. The shooter rushed to the car, pulled a gun, then killed the two men, the decision says.
The trial judge relied on fingerprints on a Walmart grocery bag and a Wendy’s restaurant bag, as well as CCTV footage from a nearby building, to place Benn at the scene. The video shows the two bags taken from the trunk of the second vehicle.
The Appeal Court said the distance and angle of the footage shows pixelated images of the shooter and that the DNA evidence was not sufficient to place Benn at the scene.
“The appellant’s guilt is not the only reasonable possibility when viewing the totality of the evidence and therefore that evidence is not sufficient to establish the appellant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” the Appeal Court said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 19, 2026.