Killer gets 15-year sentence for 2020 shooting of Vancouver shop owner

Santana McElroy recalled Thursday how she sat on the sidewalk outside Main Street’s Dank Mart after getting the devastating news that the love of her life, Amin Shahin Shakur, had been shot to death behind his store an hour earlier.

At the time of the July 2020 slaying, McElroy didn’t know she was pregnant with their daughter.

Her voice broke as she told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Janet Winteringham how the little girl will only know her dad in photos.

“Our daughter doesn’t deserve to grow up without her dad,” she said at a sentencing hearing for his killer, Mohammad Abu-Sharife. “On top of raising a daughter alone and trying to play both roles as best as I can, I carry tremendous fear about our future. I worry about the effects that this trauma will have on her as she grows up.”

In December, Abu-Sharife, 43, pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was originally charged with second-degree murder.

Winteringham sentenced the 43-year-old to 15 years for killing Shakur after a brief conversation in the alley behind the store.

Crown Alex Burton and defence lawyer Michael Shapray entered a joint sentencing submission Thursday morning, which Winteringham cited in accepting their proposed term.

She said “agreements of this nature are vitally important” to the judicial system.

Winteringham said Abu-Sharife should never had taken a gun with him when he went out that night.

“This is a gravely serious offence.”

Burton read out an agreed statement of facts, as the families of both men sat in the gallery of the Vancouver Law Courts.

Just before 11 p.m. on July 13, Shakur and Dank Mart staff were unloading stock from his Mercedes Sprinter van in the alley behind the shop at 6418 Main St.

Abu-Sharife, who had earlier supplied cannabis to another of Shakur’s businesses and considered him a friend, arrived in a rented vehicle about 11:10 p.m. and greeted Shakur.

They talked for about six minutes before “the conversation became heated, and Mr. Abu-Sharife became animated.”

He then pulled a nine millimetre semi-automatic firearm from his hoodie pouch and fired at Shakur four times, hitting him in the thigh, chest and backside. One bullet hit his heart and a lung.

“When he was shot, Mr. Shakur initially stumbled forward and turned and ran … into the store,” Burton said.

Abu-Sharife got back into his rental car, tossed the gun in a nearby dumpster and took off. The shooting and his getaway were all captured on CCTV.

“In the store, Mr. Shakur died before the police or emergency services arrived,” Burton said. “Police recovered four shell casings from the scene and the gun from inside the dumpster. Mr. Abu-Sharife’s DNA was recovered from the frame grip, magazine and cartridges in the gun.”

Burton said that a 15-year sentence was appropriate because Abu-Sharife has a “high level of moral culpability.”

“The facts of this case in the agreed statement of facts are nearer to murder than to accident,” he said “The act of bringing the gun to the meeting or subsequent confrontation with Mr. Shakur demonstrates an intentional risk. Killing him was the consequential harm.”

He also cited Abu-Sharife’s criminal history. He was convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to commit murder after planning to use homemade explosives to kill rival drug dealers on the Lower Mainland.

In a telephone call recorded by police, he told his accomplice that using explosives would be most effective.

“At least this way we can take out a dozen people at once,” he said. “I don’t care if you take out another block with it, it has to be done.”

Shapray told Winteringham that at the time of the killing Abu-Sharife struggled with an addition to opiates after having a series of car crashes that left him with chronic pain.

And he said his client only carried a gun that night as he feared for his life after getting a number of warnings from police about threats from his co-accused in the earlier conspiracy case.

Abu-Sharife also made a statement expressing remorse, but suggested that Shakur had threatened him — something that was not in the evidence and which Winteringham said she did not factor into her decision.

But she said she believed Abu-Sharife regretted his actions and the impact it has had.

“I do not question the sincerity of his apology or his remorse,” she said.

kbolan@postmedia.com

twitter.com/kbolan

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