Shooter in brazen murder of Brantford couple found guilty

The intended target was their son, Roger Van Every, a self-admitted drug dealer whose supplier had allegedly put a hit on him over an unpaid debt.

In a decision released April 5, Justice Andrew Goodman said Malik Mbuyi was the shooter, but not the planner, in the brazen daytime attack that left two innocent people dead.

Originally charged with two counts of first-degree murder, Mbuyi was instead found guilty of second-degree murder due to inconsistent testimony from a key Crown witness, Kareem Zedan. Goodman said he failed to establish the accused’s involvement in the planning of the incident. Mbuyi had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“It is very tempting to reach a conclusion that there was some planning and that Mbuyi was a direct participant to it,” Goodman wrote in his decision.

“However, Zedan’s numerous external and internal inconsistent versions, his motivation to lie, coupled with the lack of cogent, corroborative evidence, provides a deficit of reliable evidence about if Mbuyi planned and deliberated the murder.”

Mbuyi was one of seven men Brantford police charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the slayings on Park Road South, a short residential road near Mohawk Park that connects to the Wayne Gretzky Parkway.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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To date, none of them have been convicted of either offence.

Three of the accused — Dylan Alridge, Thomy Baez-Eusibio and Terrell Philbert — pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiring to commit an indictable offence with a firearm. Another, Salloum Jassem — alleged to have orchestrated the attempted murder of Roger and subsequent murders of Reynolds and Van Every — was acquitted on all counts after a two-week trial last fall, while Nathan Howes still has his case before the courts.

Kareem Zedan, meanwhile, struck a deal with the Crown in April 2021, agreeing to plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter in return for his testimony in the trials of some of the accused.

In the case against Mbuyi, Zedan “repeated and unapologetically lied under oath,” said Goodman, who called the Crown’s key witness in the proceedings “a proven liar and perjurer” as well as a “self-proclaimed career criminal and witness of the worst sort” whose evidence is inconsistent.

The judge took specific issue with Zedan’s testimony around the planning of the murders.

Despite testifying that Mbuyi and three others knew why they were travelling from Toronto to Brantford on July 18 — namely to kill Roger — Zedan later said during cross examination that the crew weren’t privy to the purpose of their trip.

“Zedan stated that ‘Malik had no idea why they were travelling to Brantford,’ and at best Mbuyi may have thought they were going to commit a robbery,” Goodman wrote in his decision, adding Zedan’s evidence was “all over the map.”

While the Crown conceded Zedan was an unreliable witness, they managed to corroborate key pieces of his testimony with independent evidence that placed Mbuyi at the centre of the crime, Goodman ruled.

That included droplets of Mbuyi’s blood and DNA found on the driver’s seat of a Chrysler 300, one of two cars Zedan said the crew used to drive to and flee from the Brantford home. A biologist for the Centre of Forensic Sciences testified at trial it was “greater than one trillion times more likely” that the blood found in the car was Mbuyi’s rather than another person’s.

“Clearly this was not deposited by merely incidental contact,” Goodman said of the blood, noting there was also no evidence to suggest Mbuyi had contact with the vehicle before or after the murders.

Another piece of independent evidence used to corroborate Zedan’s testimony was cellphone records which found the witness was with Mbuyi in Brantford on the morning of the murders.

The Crown also presented several CCTV clips showing the masked shooter prowling around the victims’ home. While on its own the video couldn’t establish the identity of the shooter, Goodman said the shooter shared similar distinctive body features as Mbuyi, including a broad, husky build, thick thighs and prominent backside — characteristics that none of the other suspects had.

“Having reviewed the photographs, the CCTV captures at the residence and descriptions of the other (accused) parties, I can determine they were not, in fact, the shooter,” Goodman said.

The footage also showed the shooter being in proximity to the home’s front glass door, behind which Van Every was hiding. Drawing from the testimony of son Roger, who said at trial he saw the shooter stick his right hand through the shattered glass door, Goodman said there was “a high probability” the shooter sustained minor cuts to his right hand.

A photo of Mbuyi on July 11 presented by the Crown “clearly depicted” no apparent injuries on his right hand, Goodman said. But about a month later, on Aug. 20, Mbuyi appeared in a rap video with a fresh scar on the back of his right hand.

While Mbuyi’s defence lawyers argued the shooter couldn’t have injured his hand because there was no blood detected on the porch or front of the residence, Goodman called their claims “speculative.”

“He fled immediately running away on the lawn,” the judge said. “(The defence’s) contention would at the very least require some evidence, but none was presented to support such a conjecture.”

Ultimately, the independent evidence used to corroborate Zedan’s evidence left Goodman “satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” that Mbuyi had the requisite state of mind and specific intent to kill Roger, but instead killed Reynolds and Van Every, resulting in culpable homicide.

A date for Mbuyi’s sentencing has yet to be set.