A Calgary man has been found guilty of murder and attempted murder in a case the prosecution described as a \u201cdrug deal gone wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
After deliberating for nearly two full days, jurors in Paulos Berhe’s second-degree murder trial reached their verdict Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Over the last two weeks, jurors heard evidence in the trial of the Calgary drug dealer.<\/p>\n
Berhe admitted to fatally shooting Donald Lyons, 43, and his girlfriend, Amber Beach, in December 2023, but told the judge he was acting in self-defence after the couple attacked him.<\/p>\n
Deliberations began Tuesday afternoon following closing arguments by Crown prosecutor Peter Mackenzie and defence lawyer Allan Fay.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard that on the night of Dec. 18, 2023, Lyons and Berhe made plans to meet at the Portico Hookah Lounge in the city\u2019s southeast.<\/p>\n
Lyons texted Berhe that he wanted to buy $9,000 worth of crack cocaine.<\/p>\n
When Lyons and Beach arrived at the bar, they parked outside and Berhe got into the back seat.<\/p>\n
Berhe testified that Beach attacked him with a knife and Lyons pointed a gun in his face. He said that’s when he reached for his own handgun and shot at the couple, killing Lyons and injuring Beach.<\/p>\n
Beach’s testimony contradicted Berhe’s. She told jurors that Berhe shot both her and Lyons from the back seat without warning.<\/p>\n
Court of King\u2019s Bench Justice David Labrenz will hear sentencing arguments from Crown and defence at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Calgary man has been found guilty of murder and attempted murder in a case the prosecution described…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[19458,5738,51,19456,8527,19457],"class_list":["post-55123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-amber-beach","tag-attempted-murder","tag-calgary","tag-donald-lyons","tag-murder-trial","tag-paulos-berhe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55123","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=55123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}