Man sought in shootings was on bail at time

Second man makes first court appearance

The man wanted in the cold-blooded shooting of six young men outside an Etobicoke apartment block was free on bail from an earlier criminal charge at the time, police said Monday.

Owen Anthony Smith, 25, is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for murder and attempted murder in the shooting two weeks ago in which five men were wounded and an 18-year-old Somali-Canadian youth was killed in the crowded alcove.

Det.-Sgt. Brian Borg, the lead investigator in the case, said Monday that Smith was free on bail at the time of the March 14 shooting, while his
alleged accomplice was on probation.

He would not say what the charges were for which the two men had been released, but said they were not violent crimes.

Wendell Damian Cuff, who was arrested Sunday, made a brief but tense court appearance on Monday. He is charged with first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder in the shooting death of Abdikarim Ahmed Abdikarim and the wounding of five of his friends.

Marian Abdikarim, the victim's sister, said it was difficult to look at the accused during the brief appearance. "He has a face of no remorse," she said outside court.

"He has no remorse, nothing on his face. It's just blank. And you are sitting there and you can't do anything and it just makes me shiver."

Police say Cuff was one of two men seen in a chilling videotape made public last week showing the shooting.

"The video was shocking," said Borg. "But I think it shocked a lot of people into doing something about this sort of thing happening in our city."

The tape, taken from the apartment building's surveillance cameras, shows two men approaching the alcove where Abdikarim and five friends were standing -- just off-camera in the video. One of them pulled out a handgun and began firing repeatedly into the alcove, before both men fled the scene.

Borg said the video led to a number of tips from the public that helped him ultimately identify the two suspects.

He said information from the five young men wounded in the shooting also helped lead police to the two men.

James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4