R. v. Khoshaba, 2025 ONCJ 624
Toronto 4810 998 25 48107042-02
ONTARIO COURT OF JUSTICE
BETWEEN:
HIS MAJESTY THE KING
— AND —
NINOS KHOSHABA and ZAKKARIA WARDERE
Before Justice Peter Scrutton Heard on June 2, 3, 4, July 10 and November 13, 2025
Reasons for Sentence released on December 1, 2025
S. Arnold / A. Verma for the Crown
V. Strugurescu for the Accused, Ninos Khoshaba
A. Mamo for the Accused, Zakkaria Wardere
Introduction
1Ninos Khoshaba and Zakkaria Wardere were charged with the second-degree murder of Edwin Redmond. Both defendants pled guilty to manslaughter after a short preliminary inquiry. The parties agreed that the evidence tendered at the preliminary inquiry and a supplementary Agreed Statement of Fact would form the basis for their pleas. Ultimately, both defendants admitted that they unlawfully assaulted Mr. Redmond and unintentionally caused his death. A third man, Liban Mohamed, was also involved in that assault. He was never arrested and is believed to have fled the country.
2The evidence tendered at the preliminary inquiry establishes that Mr. Mohamed caused the most grievous of Mr. Redmond’s injuries and, among the three, was most culpable for his death. The parties agree that, despite Mr. Mohamed’s relative culpability, the defendants’ role in the assault warrants a significant penitentiary sentence but disagree on the appropriate length.
Relevant Facts
3Mr. Redmond lost his life while attending a gathering in a Toronto Community Housing building on February 10, 2024. Several people were at Mr. Khoshaba’s apartment, drinking and using crack cocaine and marijuana. This was a common occurrence there. A friend of Mr. Redmond’s brought him to the apartment that evening. People came and went throughout the night. Around 5:00 a.m., after Mr. Redmond’s friend had left, the group consisted of the defendants, Liban Mohamed, and two women, Jennifer Masih and Muna Mohamed.1
4Mr. Redmond and Mr. Mohamed began to argue. It is not clear what triggered the argument – whether Mr. Mohamed wanted Mr. Redmond to leave, was jealous of Mr. Redmond and Muna Mohamed, or was upset that Mr. Redmond had made fun of Mr. Wardere’s clothes. What is clear is that the precipitating grievance did not foreshadow the terrible violence that was to come.
5The argument became physical. Because everyone present was intoxicated, what happened next, and the exact sequence of events that followed, is unclear. Mr. Mohamed and Mr. Redmond began to fight. The fight quickly became one-sided, with Mr. Mohamed violently beating Mr. Redmond for some time. For reasons that remain unexplained, both defendants joined in the attack on Mr. Redmond. They formally admitted to using their hands and feet, and weapons of opportunity, including a wooden chair and glass bottle, to punch, kick, and strike Mr. Redmond. At the same time, Mr. Mohamed used a hammer to repeatedly smash Mr. Redmond in the head, causing catastrophic injuries. The joint attack continued after Mr. Redmond lay prone. The witnesses to the attack yelled for help and for the men to stop.
6Ms. Mohamed and Ms. Masih gave unreliable accounts of how long the attack on Mr. Redmond lasted, even as long as 15 minutes. It likely did not last that long but I am satisfied it took place over at least five minutes, long enough for the security guards on the main floor to receive a complaint, mistakenly attend the 4th floor in response, and then attend Mr. Khoshaba’s unit. When they stood outside his apartment, they heard yelling, noises made by someone in pain, a woman yelling for help, and what they thought were banging noises against the wall. The guards went back to the lobby and called 911 before reattending the unit.
7Mr. Khoshaba fled the apartment and the building. Liban Mohamed escaped by jumping out of an apartment window. Mr. Wardere remained with Ms. Masih and Ms. Mohamed. He was panicked and told them to stay. They all went to sleep in the bedroom.
8When building security returned, no one answered their knocks. Eventually the police arrived and broke through the door. They found Mr. Redmond lying dead in the hallway. A broken wooden chair, glass bottles, and a bloody hammer were present at the scene. Mr. Wardere was asleep on a bed in the bedroom; Ms. Masih and Ms. Mohamed were asleep on the floor.
9Post-mortem examination determined that multiple blunt impact injuries to the head, neck, and torso caused Mr. Redmond’s death. The most catastrophic injuries included multiple skull fractures which caused brain bleeding. Injuries to his torso damaged his ribs and lungs. Injuries to his neck included hyoid and thyroid cartilage fractures. Some of the contusions on his back resembled shoe tread marks. Several contusions on his lower back were consistent with having been hit with the leg of a chair.
Victim Impact
10Edmond Redmond was 27 years old when he died. His mother spoke about the impact of this offence. He was loved by family and friends. His death is an unimaginable loss. She poignantly observed that no one involved in this proceeding, including the witnesses, defendants, lawyers and judge, knew her son at all. Her loss is made worse knowing that her son’s death was senseless and inexplicable. The reality is that no sentence I can impose will remediate this loss.
The Offenders
11Because of the violence described above, I was surprised to learn that neither of the defendants had criminal records or any previous involvement in the justice system. Because of the milieu in which the offence took place, I was not surprised to learn that both have had difficult lives.
12Mr. Wardere was 27 years old when he committed this offence. He had an unstable adolescence marred by conflict with his mother and housing insecurity. He has not worked in any sustained capacity since 2019. He began using alcohol and cannabis when he was 19 and quickly became addicted to more serious drugs including fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine. He has never had any treatment for his addiction. He expressed remorse and regret for his crime and believes that his intoxication impaired his judgment. I have no trouble concluding that he was intoxicated at the time he committed this offence.
13Mr. Khoshaba is 51 years old. He fled from Iraq when he was 15. He is a Canadian citizen who has lived in Canada since 2000. He is divorced and has one adult son who lives in the United States. He began to use opioids after an injury in 2004. In the two years preceding this offence, he was a heavy user of fentanyl and methamphetamine. He has been on a methadone program since 2018 but has had no addiction counselling. He was homeless for a number of years before securing community housing in 2022, the same apartment where Mr. Redmond was killed, which became a place frequented by strangers who used drugs. Like Mr. Wardere, Mr. Khoshaba expressed remorse and sadness over Mr. Redmond’s death.
The Parties’ Positions
14The Crown seeks a 10-year penitentiary sentence less pre-sentence custody, emphasizing the protracted violence involved in the assault and the obviousness that multiple hammer strikes to Mr. Redmond’s head would be fatal. The defendants are mature adults, and there is no basis to distinguish them in terms of relative culpability or antecedents.
15Defence counsel tacitly accept this latter point, as both submit that 6-year sentences minus pre-trial custody are appropriate sentences for their respective clients. Ms. Strugurescu submits that this offence was out of character for Mr. Khoshaba, given his age and the absence of any history of offending. It was unplanned and its main culprit was Liban Mohamed. She argues that this offence lacks many of the aggravating factors present in cases that attract sentences at the higher end of the manslaughter range, such as the use of a firearm or advanced planning.
16Ms. Mamo emphasizes as mitigating Mr. Wardere’s tumultuous upbringing, addiction issues, relative youthfulness, and guilty plea. The 6-year sentence she proposes is significant for a first offender and properly accounts for some of the harsh conditions of his pre-sentence custody. She submits that I can take judicial notice of the fact that Mr. Wardere, a Black man, has experienced systemic disadvantages that contributed to his homelessness and addictions, which in turn contributed to his commission of this offence.
Aggravating Facts
17Some of the more common aggravating facts in manslaughter cases such as serious criminal records, firearms, or causing death in the commission of a separate criminal offence are absent here. I am satisfied, however, that the protracted, uncalibrated violence the defendants perpetrated is sufficient to situate their moral culpability on the far side of the spectrum. Mr. Redmond’s death from Mr. Mohamed’s repeated hammer strikes and the defendants’ assaults was more than foreseeable, it was virtually certain. The defendants used weapons of opportunity in a group attack on someone who was being grievously injured by Liban Mohamed. The actus reus and mens rea here are at the higher end of manslaughter, closer to murder than to negligence: R. v. Jones-Solomon, 2015 ONCA 654 at paras. 85-86. There are innumerable contexts in which five minutes is a relatively brief period of time but in the context of violence of this character, which occurred while bystanders were crying for the defendants to “stop”, five minutes must have seemed interminable.
18Apart from the aggravating features of the attack itself, Mr. Khoshaba fled his own apartment in an attempt to evade arrest. Mr. Wardere pressured the distraught witnesses to remain in the apartment before he fell asleep in a bedroom, steps away from where Mr. Redmond lay. I agree that nothing differentiates the defendants’ relative culpability.
Mitigating Facts
19The defendants’ pleas of guilt and demonstrations of remorse are significantly mitigating factors. The guilty pleas are not particularly early ones. They came after the preliminary inquiry but do obviate the need for a trial which would not have taken place for at least a year. I accept that there would be triable issues there relating to intent and the reliability of the eye-witnesses’ testimony.
20Mr. Wardere and Mr. Khoshaba committed this offence as mature adults. I do not find Mr. Wardere’s youth relative to Mr. Khoshaba to be mitigating. He was 27 years old when he committed this offence and the pre-sentence report indicates he had been using and selling drugs within this milieu for years. Nor is it mitigating that this senseless attack on Mr. Redmond was spontaneous, or that it did not occur during the commission of another criminal offence. These are properly characterized as the absence of aggravating factors.
21Mr. Khoshaba and Mr. Wardere are first offenders. The fact that they have had no prior involvement in the justice system, especially given their drug-fuelled lifestyles, suggests that this violence was out of character and speaks to their positive rehabilitative prospects. The principle of restraint is engaged here but must be subordinated to the primary sentencing objectives of deterrence and denunciation. While a significant penitentiary sentence is required, it should not be longer than necessary to achieve these sentencing objectives.
22I accept that the unfortunate circumstances of both of the defendants’ lives – untreated addiction, housing insecurity, a lack of family supports in the years preceding this offence and, in Mr. Wardere’s case, potential systemic disadvantages – likely contributed to this offending. By this I mean that, absent some or all of these background factors, the defendants may not have found themselves mired in a culture of constant substance abuse where crime, violence, and erratic behaviour are more likely to occur.
23I do not have direct evidence that the defendants have experienced particularly harsh conditions of pre-sentence custody but infer from the length of time they have spent in custody, the many recent decisions that have discussed conditions in the local detention centre, and my own familiarity with the institutional records that are regularly tendered in this jurisdiction that the defendants have experienced lockdowns and over-crowding and that some mitigation for these conditions is warranted: R. v. Dowison, 2022 ONSC 741 at paras. 58 and 59; R v. Shaikh, 2024 ONSC 774 at para. 15; R. v. Moore, 2025 ONCJ 441 at para. 15 and R. v. Belanger, 2025 ONSC 3938 at paras. 79-81. I will factor this into my assessment of what a proportionate sentence requires: R. v. Marshall, 2021 ONCA 344 at paras. 52-53.
The Appropriate Sentence
24The fundamental principle of sentencing is proportionality. The other sentencing principles articulated in s. 718.2 must be considered so as to produce a sentence that is proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender. My task in this sentencing is to balance the mitigating aspects of Mr. Wardere and Mr. Khoshaba’s individual circumstances against the seriousness of the crime they committed and the harm that they caused.
25It is beyond dispute that denunciation and general deterrence are the paramount sentencing principles for the offence of manslaughter. It is also clear that, because of the wide spectrum of conduct that can ground liability for this offence, sentences for manslaughter can vary significantly. Counsel have provided me with a number of helpful authorities in support of their respective positions. I accept the Crown’s submission that the range of sentence for manslaughter with aggravating features is 8-12 years and that this range is appropriate here. See, for example: R. v. Smith, 2022 ONSC 3800; R. v. Clarke, 2003 CanLII 28199 (ON CA), [2003] O.J. No. 1966 (C.A.); R. v. Starostin, 2023 ONSC 3677; R. v. Tahir, 2016 ONCA 13; and R. v. Devaney (2006), 2006 CanLII 33666 (ON CA), 215 O.A.C. 253 (C.A.).
26In R. v. Warner, 2019 ONCA 1014, Pardu J.A. concluded that “jurisprudence suggests that 12 or 13 years is generally appropriate for aiders or abettors to manslaughter, where those offenders have a high degree of moral culpability.” In support of this conclusion, she cited R. v. Thompson, 2008 ONCA 693; R. v. Jones-Solomon, supra; R. v. Chretien, [2009] O.J. No. 2578; R. v. Dirie, 2018 ONSC 5536 R. v. Monk, 2003 BCSC 449, aff'd 2005 BCCA 394.
27Thompson was a 19-year old who was found guilty of manslaughter and received a 13-year sentence after a confederate in a robbery fatally shot a bystander. Jones-Solomon was part of a group who entered a man’s apartment and beat him before another person fatally shot him; she received a 13-year sentence. Goyette, Chretien’s co-accused, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 13 years after he kicked a man in the head in the course of a break-and-enter to steal drugs (Chretien was convicted of murder). Warner received a 15-year sentence as a party to manslaughter and aggravated assault for brandishing a gun to protect a co-accused (who was himself convicted of murder and aggravated assault).
28In my view, these cases warranted higher sentences than the defendants’ crime because those offences took place during other serious crimes, some of which involved firearms and some of which involved advanced planning. But here, unlike the offenders discussed above, the defendants are not aiders or abettors but co-principals. I am satisfied that they have a high degree of moral blameworthiness that warrants a sentence within the 8-12 year range for manslaughter with aggravating features, albeit not at the higher end of this range.
29I agree that the 10-year sentence that the Crown seeks properly reflects the seriousness of this offence and the primary sentencing objectives of denunciation and deterrence. But, because of the defendants’ guilty pleas and the other mitigating factors that I have referred to, and the relevance of the principles of restraint and rehabilitation, I do not think that a prison term of this length is necessary to achieve a fit and proportionate sentence.
30Conversely, I am satisfied that the 6-year sentence sought by defence counsel would not sufficiently denounce and deter this conduct and would be disproportionate to the seriousness of this offence. In my view, an 8.5 year sentence appropriately balances the aggravating and mitigating factors.
31Mr. Wardere has spent 661 real days in pre-sentence custody, the equivalent of 992 enhanced days or 33 months. He will have a net sentence of 69 months left to serve. Mr. Khoshaba has spent 3 fewer days in custody and his sentence will be adjusted accordingly.
32Both defendants will also be subject to a lifetime prohibition from possessing prohibited firearms, restricted firearms, prohibited weapons, prohibited devices and prohibited ammunition pursuant to section s. 109 (3) of the Criminal Code and a DNA order.
Dated: December 1, 2025 ____________________________
Justice Peter Scrutton