The fatal shooting of a city man was the result of a drug robbery gone wrong, a Calgary murder suspect admitted Wednesday.
But Paulos Berhe told a Court of King’s Bench jury he was the victim, not the perpetrator of the would-be heist.
He feared for his life, he said, when he wildly pulled the trigger of his concealed handgun after his drug client, Donald Lyons, tried to shoot him over $9,000 worth of crack cocaine.
Berhe, 30, is charged with second-degree murder in the Dec. 18, 2023, death of Lyons and discharging a firearm with intent to wound the deceased’s girlfriend.
He met Lyons, and the dead man’s girlfriend, Amber Beach, when he showed up at the Portico Lounge in southeast Calgary to sell him a half-pound brick (about 226 grams) of the illicit substance.
But he said when he got into the back seat of Lyons’ parked pickup truck he heard the doors lock and Beach and her boyfriend turned towards him and attacked.
“I started getting blows to the chest and my head,” he told defence lawyer Allan Fay, explaining Beach came at him with a knife.
“I seen Amber Beach holding a blade.”
Berhe said he tried to fend off the knife and escape.
“That’s when I tried the door. It didn’t work, I realized I was trapped in the truck,” he said.
Lyons then threw a blanket over his head while Beach continued to assault him, Berhe testified.
“It felt like a hammer was hitting me.”
He managed to pull the blanket off only to face a more serious threat.
“That’s when I seen Lyons putting a handgun to my face,” the accused said.
“What are you thinking?” Fay asked.
“Excuse my language, ‘oh, f—, I’m about to die.’”
Lyons twice pulled the trigger of the revolver, but it failed to discharge.
He began struggling with Lyons for the weapon while Beach continued stabbing him, Berhe said.
“Somehow I managed to put my hand in my pocket and fired my handgun towards their direction,” he said.
At that point Beach exited the front passenger door, which unlocked his door and he fled.
But after moving 10 to 15 steps from Lyons’ truck, Berhe turned around to retrieve his drugs and also took the revolver that had fallen to the floor.
In his opening address to jurors last week, Crown prosecutor Peter Mackenzie called the double shooting a “drug deal gone wrong.”
He said Lyons had arrange to buy an illicit substance from Berhe, but when the accused got in his pickup she shot both victims.
In his opening statement, Fay told jurors his client was acting in self-defence.
“He was attacked by two desperate drug addicts,” Fay said.
“Even drug dealers are entitled to defend themselves.”