or any law for that matter……….. punish the criminals , not law abiding citizens —- criminal control , NOT Gun control

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Nightclub killers guilty again
Date: Nov 23, 2006 9:12 AM
PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Sun
DATE: 2006.11.23
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: 6
ILLUSTRATION: photo by Errol McGihon Aschley Noel and Monique Lexima
leave the Ottawa courthouse yesterday. Aschley’s brother and Monique’s
son Apaid Noel was murdered in 1998. Robert Sarrazin and Darlind Jean
were found guilty of second-degree murder in the slaying. Apaid Noel was
shot outside the Theatre nightclub on Rideau St., and succumbed to a
blood clot a month later. photo by Errol McGihon Spent shotgun shells
that were entered into evidence at the murder trial of Robert Sarrazin
and Darlind Jean. photo of Darlind Jean Crack Down Posse photo of Robert
Sarrazin Eight years in jail photo of Apaid Noel Handing out flyers
Graphics
BYLINE: SEAN MCKIBBON, COURT BUREAU
WORD COUNT: 1202

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Nightclub killers guilty again
Jury finds gang members responsible in death for second time

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Two gunshots ring out at the corner of Rideau and Dalhousie streets. A
man crumples to the sidewalk in front of the Theatre nightclub like a
discarded rag.

It’s around 3 a.m. Feb. 19, 1998.

Apaid Noel, 21, and his older brother Aschley have been handing out
flyers to patrons leaving the Theatre nightclub.

Now Apaid, a Cite Collegiale administration student and member of the
Haitian street gang The Dope Squad, is bleeding on the sidewalk with a
gaping wound in his side and right arm.

He’s dying.

Doctors will resuscitate him — even discharge him from hospital on
March 13, 1998. But five days later he collapses and dies when a blood
clot lodges in his lungs.

Death waited a month, but justice took eight years.

Yesterday, after six weeks of trial and four-and-a-half days of
deliberation a seven-man, five-woman jury found Apaid’s attackers
Darlind Jean and Robert Sarrazin — two members of the rival Crack Down
Posse street gang — guilty of second-degree murder.

It’s the second time a jury has come to the same conclusion that
Sarrazin and Jean were responsible for the death and intended to kill or
cause enough damage that they knew death could ensue.

The guilty pair has already spent eight years in jail after their arrest
and subsequent conviction in 2000. The last time they received a life
sentence it was with a parole ineligibility period of 18 years. Crown
prosecutor James Cavanagh said yesterday he’ll be asking the court to
impose a similar sentence.

This was their second kick at the can after the Court of Appeal ruled
Apaid’s audiotaped statement to police fingering them should have been
excluded from evidence. The statement wasn’t sworn and police didn’t
tell Apaid it was important to tell the truth.

This trial was also different because a third man, Wolfson Cetoute, who
was convicted of manslaughter at the first trial, has already served his
five-year sentence and been deported to Haiti. Had he been present, his
statement to police admitting that he and the others two men were there
that night could have been presented.

But in the end it didn’t make any difference.

The jury accepted testimony by Apaid’s older brother Aschley, who told
them Apaid was gunned down by Sarrazin with two blasts from a sawed-off
shotgun from point-blank range at the urging of Jean.

After the verdict, Aschley sat in the court gallery, grinning from ear
to ear. Jean turned to him from the prisoner’s box and muttered
something. Sarrazin attempted to usher him out of the box and back
toward cells.

Outside court, Aschley said it was a threat, but wouldn’t say what was
said.

“That’s beside the point. The point is they’re guilty,” he said.
“From
Day One until today I never had any doubt. A fact is a fact, they killed
my brother so they were going to be guilty.”

Aside from the audiotape, Aschley’s testimony was the only other piece
of Crown evidence which directly implicated the two accused men.

Aschley says Sarrazin, Jean and a third man named Wolfson Cetoute came
out of the then Theatre nightclub and began making death threats.

“You’re gonna die tonight. Your brother’s gonna die tonight.”

Aschley, who denies his brother was ever involved in a gang or took
cocaine, says he knew Jean from high school and had seen Sarrazin with
Jean before.

The trio would leave, Aschley says, but only to return a short time
later with a gun.

Aschley says Jean and Cetoute ran interference and distracted Apaid,
while Sarrazin, the trigger man, stood behind them and then stepped
between them and fired.

He says the first blast hit Apaid in the arm as his brother raised his
arm defensively. Then Jean said, ‘Kill him, kill him,’ and Sarrazin
fired another blast into Apaid’s prone body.

What the jury didn’t get to hear was Apaid’s description of it:

“I didn’t have time to run,” a heavily medicated Noel told investigators
from his hospital bed. “But I, like, made a gesture raising my hand to
see if I could try and stop him, but he shot me in the arm. And then I
fell to the ground.

“Then I looked out of the corner of my eye, Bobby (Sarrazin) was still
there. He cranked a second time and he shot me again, and then I got the
jolt in my back which made me … lift off the ground a bit.”

Noel told lead police investigators Sgt. Randy Wisker and Det. Roch
Lachance he moved here at his mother’s urging because things were
“starting to become more serious” back in Montreal.

“I’m one of the gang enemies,” he told them.

But police say Apaid was much more heavily involved in Montreal’s gang
subculture than he or his family would admit.

When asked why the shooting happened, Aschley only says, “That’s a very
good question. You should ask them.”

Susan Mulligan, who defended Sarrazin at the first and second trial
called Apaid’s claims about infuriating the CDP with his support for a
Bo-Gars member at a court proceeding “nonsense,” and said there was
never any evidence to corroborate what he said.

The Crown’s theory of the case, backed up by testimony from a Montreal
police gang expert is that the episode was another flashpoint in a
bloody conflict between the Haitian street gangs the CDP, the Bo-Gars
and its affiliate the Dope Squad.

Despite Aschley’s denials, an agreed statement of facts in the case
based on police surveillance, informants and investigation says that
Apaid was a Dope Squad member before Feb. 1998.

Aschley’s credibility on the witness stand came under heavy fire from
defence counsel who pointed to Apaid’s arrest at a hospital Feb 16, 1997
with a sawed-off shotgun. Again, an agreed statement of facts belied
Aschley’s testimony and said that Apaid told police he’d gone to the
hospital to protect a Bo-Gars member who had been shot.

In June 1997, a shootout between two groups of young black men in
downtown Montreal left a CDP member wounded. A bullet-riddled car was
pulled over after the incident and Apaid was found in the back seat with
a handgun at his feet. Apaid Noel maintained he was the victim of the
shooting.

At Apaid’s preliminary hearing on the charges resulting from the
hospital incident, a person in the courtroom identified hiumself as
Aschley Noel, but Aschley denied being there.

After the 1997 shootout Aschley, Apaid, his parents and several members
of the Dope Squad attended a meeting with the Montreal police anti-gang
unit.

Yesterday Aschley said the jury’s decision was a vindication of his
testimony and showed that the jury did not believe the evidence about a
toxicology report finding cocaine in his brother’s system or that his
brother was a gang member.

Cocaine played a much more central role in the trial this time, as Crown
pathologist Dr. Brian Johnston testified that it was possible, though
unlikely that cocaine had sparked the fatal clot. In the last trial he
said he didn’t think it was possible.

While Apaid’s reputation was dragged through the mud, the men who killed
him can hardly lay claim to a clean record.

An agreed statement of facts says Jean was shot in the back in January
1994 and was shot in the abdomen in May 1995. In the first shooting,
Jean was unco-operative with police. In the second, police say he told
them he couldn’t identify the shooter, but thought it might be someone
from the “Master B” gang.

Meanwhile, Sarrazin was busted in 1997 for repeatedly selling cocaine to
an undercover RCMP officer. In 1995, he was stopped in Montreal and
found with a backpack full of ammunition and a .38 Smith and Wesson
handgun. In 1994, his apartment was the scene of an action-movie style
ambush with three masked men bursting in and spraying the room with
bullets while Sarrazin and other CDP members escaped out a window.

Apaid told police he came to Ottawa at the urging of his parents because
things were becoming too rough in Montreal.

Aschley, his wife Rose and Apaid’s then girlfriend Pascale Millien say
there was nothing gang-related going on the night Apaid was shot. The
flyers were to promote a dance that Apaid had organized. Apaid was
hoping to raise money for his school and for his mother’s seamstress
business.

Wisker said he was pleased with the outcome.

“It’s nice to have the feeling our case held up, notwithstanding some of
the evidence being lost with the court of appeal decision,” he said.

Translating for his mother, Monique Lexima, Aschley said she felt the
verdict sent a message about justice to people living in fear of violent
street gangs in Montreal. Aschley said that because people are fearful
gangs members feel they can act with impunity.

“This is justice,” he said.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !