'i'm dying. i need help.' survivors of deadly knife fight at st. laurent mall testify as crown closes its case
mohamed osman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault, though he admits he stabbed marcus maloney and his two friends that day.
sep 10 2024
5 minute read
an ottawa police officer cordons off an area near the st. laurent shopping centre after one person was stabbed to death and two others were injured on sept. 16, 2022.
tony caldwell
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postmedia
the two young men who survived a deadly knife fight inside the st. laurent shopping centre in 2022 didn’t know they had been stabbed until the fight was over and they both realized they were bleeding.
jacob grant-dallaire and denis plumb said they were first alerted to the cries of their friend, 18-year-old marcus maloney, who had just been fatally stabbed in the neck during the chaotic moments of a melee between two groups of young men at the mall.
“i’m dying. i need help,” grant-dallaire heard someone say amid the chaos, only to realize it was his longtime friend, maloney.
“i could tell that something had happened, but i didn’t know what. i just knew that marcus wasn’t ok.”
grant-dallaire and plumb, both 20 at the time of the incident on sept. 16, 2022, testified monday as the final witnesses in the crown’s case against mohamed osman.
osman, 20, pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault at the outset of his jury trial last week, though he admitted he stabbed maloney and his two friends that day.
crown prosecutors told the jury it was anticipated that osman would claim he acted in self-defence or in defence of a friend who was locked in a “scuffle” with one of maloney’s friends on the floor when the three stabbings happened in a matter of seconds.
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grant-dallaire was stabbed twice on his left torso and shoulder as he exchanged punches with osman.
“i thought i had broken ribs from a punch until (another friend) told me i was cut, and i felt with my hand and it was dripping with blood,” he testified.
plumb was stabbed as he stepped in and “threw a couple of swings” at osman.
“i thought it was just a couple of punches, i didn’t think anything of it until we got outside,” he recalled monday.
prosecutors told the jury that the backpack plumb wore that day may have saved him from more serious injuries.
the jury was shown photos of plumb’s champion-brand backpack with two large punctures on the left strap corresponding to the stab wounds to his left shoulder blade and collarbone.
plumb had joined the group from his job in demolition, he said, and the backpack was full of his work clothes and tools, including a hammer and a box-cutter.
grant-dallaire and maloney were both carrying folding knives concealed in their pockets when their group of friends confronted osman’s group, but, as the crown told the jury in its opening address, none of the knives or tools “were used, seen or even mentioned” before or during the melee.
according to crown attorneys robin mclachlen and john semenoff, maloney and his friends had gone to the st-laurent mall “to stick up for a friend and co-worker” who had been assaulted by a group of teenagers on an oc transpo bus the previous day.
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witnesses said that assault began when a mutual friend argued with a group of teenagers who were “harassing” an elderly woman on the bus and pressuring the senior to give up her seat. the group of teenagers then “jumped” the friend, witnesses testified.
the target of that assault later texted a friend: “wanna go beat up some students?” those friends recruited others, with maloney and grant-dallaire among the last to join, the following day.
the group of six arrived at the mall around 4:30 p.m., and one of the friends soon recognized one of the teenagers from the bus by his distinctive backpack, according to the crown’s summary.
the teen from the bus was at the mall that day in a group of five or six that included osman.
they started “jawing” with osman’s friend outside the dollarama store, challenged him to a fight and called him a “p—y” when he asked for time to gather more of his friends, mclachlen said.
on monday, grant-dallaire and plumb both said they noticed osman, dressed all in red with a red “playboy” hoodie, as he ducked into the dollarama before a fight broke out between osman’s friend and one of maloney’s friends.
“it pretty much just blew up,” plumb said, from the two groups swearing back and forth to the two young men “tussling” on the floor.
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“everything from there just went haywire.”
they saw osman in red as he rejoined the fray, though no one noticed osman was wielding a kitchen knife he had just stolen from the dollarama in his right hand.
“i saw (osman) come running around the group and coming in our direction,” plumb testified. “marcus ran to him first, and that’s when we heard screaming. we didn’t know what happened until the end.”
video of the incident played in court showed maloney, grant-dallaire and plumb near the back wall of the hallway during the initial fight, and they were not physically engaging with anyone in the moments before they were stabbed.
grant-dallaire engaged with osman after he saw maloney “stumble” back, clutching his neck.
“i saw (osman and maloney) come face-to-face … it looked like they just ran into each other,” grant-dallaire said.
he “felt punches and delivered punches” as he and osman grappled. plumb then exchanged blows with osman before the two groups scattered.
maloney died of blood loss after the knife struck seven centimetres deep at the base of his neck, severing a major artery and puncturing his left lung.
he “looked frantically for help,” mclachlen told the jury, “but the help he received wasn’t enough.”
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the crown completed its case monday after calling evidence from police and attending paramedics, forensic identification officers, the pathologist who determined maloney’s cause of death and eyewitnesses.
marcus maloney died of blood loss after being stabbed on sept. 16, 2022.
maloney family
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handout
mclachlen told the jury “it is not in dispute” that osman was the one seen on surveillance video wielding the knife and stabbing each of the three young men.
osman’s defence lawyers, ewan lyttle and biagio del greco, presented the jury with a set of admissions from their client: osman admitted to the stabbing and acknowledged he was seen on video exiting the mall and tossing the knife into a trash compactor.
the sabatier brand kitchen knife was later recovered by police and sent to forensic investigators, who found maloney’s dna on the blade.
osman was arrested at his donald street apartment that night and his red sweatshirt was also seized, analyzed and found to also contain traces of maloney’s dna.
“this trial isn’t about who stabbed marcus maloney (and his friends) … this is not in dispute,” mclachlen told the jury. “this trial will be about the decisions mr. osman made … his intentions, his reasons and his motivations for doing what he did.”
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