Killed TSN staffer Jonathan Gayle-West was shot by total strangers, Crown says at murder trial
Jonathan Gayle-West was a story editor at TSN, but his dream was to be on air.
On Dec. 12, 2018, he was just weeks away from making that dream a reality with an interview for a sportscaster position set for January.
Instead the 29-year-old from Oshawa was shot dead in his Honda Civic in northwest Toronto around 6 p.m., shortly after visiting a pastor for advice about his future at the behest of his mother.
The brazen killing stunned the city and left his family devastated at the loss of their beloved “
supernova.”
On Monday, Crown prosecutor Paul Zambonini said two men — Samir Adem and Salman Ahmed — were responsible for murdering Gayle-West, and that the jury would hear that both men were connected to the crime scene by DNA, surveillance video and the murder weapon.
The two men were total strangers to Gayle-West, Zambonini said.
Adem and Ahmed have both pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
In a brief opening overview of the evidence the jury is expected to hear during the trial, Zambonini said the Crown alleged the two men got into Gayle-West’s car near Kipling and Dixon Roads and shot him three times in the torso — with one bullet piercing his heart.
He said surveillance video shows Gayle-West’s car driving northbound on Islington Avenue, and then veering onto the sidewalk and a lawn — stopping after hitting a tree.
“You will then see on video surveillance two men get out of the passenger side of the car,” Zambonini said. “They run away together.”
Shortly after the two men then come back, with what appears to be a flashlight, looking for something in the car, and leave again, he said.
Zambonini said surveillance video obtained by police follows the two men until they reach three apartment buildings at 323, 330, 340 Dixon Rd. The men enter the building, where their faces can be clearly seen on video from the elevator, and go into an underground parking garage, he said.
When the police searched the corner of the parking garage where they were seen, they found a plastic bag containing a handgun.
“It was the gun used to kill Jonathan,” Zambonini said, adding that forensic experts will testify that the gun fired the bullets found in Gayle-West’s body. They will also say Adem’s DNA was found on the gun and Ahmed’s fingerprints on the plastic bag.
A jacket found in the car had Gayle-West’s blood on it along with Adem’s DNA, Zambonini said. Adem’s DNA was also found under Gayle-West’s fingernails, he said.
Zambonini did not say what, if any, motive the Crown would be alleging for the murder.
The trial continues.
