A man has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the drive-by shooting death of Toronto YMCA fitness instructor nearly five years ago.<\/p>\n
Raheem McLaughlin, who was tried by jury at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, had pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Shane Stanford, 33. The jury deliberated for a full day before reaching its verdict.<\/p>\n
Stanford was killed on Oct. 7, 2020.<\/p>\n
McLaughlin, of Toronto, had represented himself at the murder trial with the support a court-appointed lawyer.<\/p>\n
As previously reported by CBC News, Stanford, who was part of the health and fitness team at the Central YMCA on Grosvenor Street near Yonge Street, had locked up the facility and headed home in the north end of the city, when someone in another car opened fire.<\/p>\n
The shooting happened before midnight in the area of Regina and Khedive avenues, near Bathurst Street and Ranee Avenue, north of Lawrence Avenue W.<\/p>\n
Moments after the gunfire, Stanford’s car crashed into the side of a home. The back window of the vehicle appeared to have been shot out.<\/p>\n
Stanford was found behind the wheel suffering from a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead in his vehicle. He was Toronto’s 58th homicide victim of 2020.<\/p>\n
Members of Stanford’s family wept when they heard the verdict wasn’t first-degree murder. At trial, they never learned why he was killed.<\/p>\n
In closing arguments Wednesday, McLaughlin and his lawyer both told the jury he should be acquitted because he was not the shooter and didn’t know the killing was about to happen.<\/p>\n
McLaughlin admitted he was the driver of the white Infiniti that chased Stanford before he was killed, but told the jury it was his passenger, not him, who fired.<\/p>\n
His lawyer Douglas Holt challenged the Crown’s theory that McLaughlin was part of a planned and deliberate murder.<\/p>\n
He and his lawyer told the jury there is no proof that McLaughlin planned the murder. The Infiniti was in his mother’s name and there was no evidence he brandished a gun, they said.<\/p>\n
The jury saw surveillance video of McLaughlin driving to several Toronto Community Housing complexes hours before Stanford was shot.<\/p>\n
His vehicle was captured on video pursuing Stanford at high speed when he was shot dead.<\/p>\n
The Crown alleged he was looking for someone to kill.<\/p>\n
McLaughlin sold the car and got rid of his passenger’s gun days after Stanford was shot, court heard.<\/p>\n
His case took six years to go to trial after he fired two different defence lawyers.<\/p>\n
A sentencing hearing will be set at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been found guilty of second-degree murder in the drive-by shooting death of Toronto YMCA fitness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[20422,20420,8527,5214,20421,48],"class_list":["post-46051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-fitness-instructor","tag-mclaughlin","tag-murder-trial","tag-ontario-superior-court-of-justice","tag-stanford","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}