Most Wanted - The Hunt for Mohammed Abdullahi | 10
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I hope you're enjoying Crime Beat Most Wanted. I'm working on so many intriguing stories, including a case that was a true whodunit that took place in the popular resort town of Banff. I'll share how the case went cold despite tireless efforts to track the killer.

This story, and so many others, will be available starting mid-February of 2025. I hope you'll join me then for a brand new season of Crime Beat. A listener's note. The following episode contains coarse language, adult themes, and content of a violent and disturbing nature, and may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.

Police are on the hunt for a suspect who allegedly targeted a man in the heart of Toronto. All I know is when I went, rode by there before they put the caution tape up, all I see was a man slumped over in the car. At lunchtime, in a car parked in the open in a densely populated area, a 36-year-old man is found brutally shot to death. Police say the suspect fled the scene and has been allegedly evading arrest since.

I'm Tracy Tong, and this is Crime Beat Most Wanted, a podcast that takes you inside open investigations of some of the most serious crimes in Canada in hopes that your tips lead police to justice. Today, I'm joined by Catherine MacDonald to share the story of a man wanted for first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death. This is The Hunt for Muhammad Abdullahi.

Moss Park, an inner-city neighbourhood with a rough reputation. In 2023 alone, it had the highest homicide rate of any neighbourhood in Toronto. This is the third fatal shooting in the GTA in less than 24 hours and people here are shaken up given that the gunfire rang out over the noon hour here in this parking lot behind me, which is right between two apartment buildings.

July 25th, 2023. A parking lot in Moss Park is swarming with police following the city's latest homicide.

Normally we get 911 calls for events like this, but in this circumstance it was actually a citizen that flagged down a uniformed officer that was on patrol. And they told the officer that about a half an hour before they thought they heard what was possibly gunfire and that there might be somebody inside a vehicle.

Detective Julia Hung is with the Toronto Police Homicide Unit. She says the car was beside a footpath and in the shadow of a cluster of soaring apartment buildings. So the victim went undiscovered for about two hours. I attended the scene with my partner, Constable Vilvanathan, and we arrived around 2:40 in the afternoon.

We came around from the building and we walked to this general area and that's where I see the victim's car, a black vehicle parked parallel here so it's facing north. With the delay in flagging down the officers, the officers locating the vehicle involved because there was no sort of exterior damage that would cause them to think

this was the car they were looking for. And the description originally was a little bit vague, so it took them some time to search all of the parking lot between the three buildings and ultimately come upon the victim's vehicle. He's in the driver's seat and all the doors are closed, so initially that's what didn't spark anybody's interest to the car.

But this isn't a parking spot. People might have walked by, but no one noticed him that you know? Did any witnesses come forward after that? After, there were a couple people that said they also heard a noise, but they weren't sure what it was. And the vehicle was tinted a little bit, so...

Nobody walked up to the car and really looked inside it to see if anybody was in it. Nobody walked up to open the door or anything like that. And again, I think fear is part of it, not knowing exactly what they heard. Police have identified the victim in Tuesday's fatal daylight shooting at Sherbourne and Shooter. 36-year-old Mohamed Ahmed of Toronto was pronounced dead after he was found in a vehicle with a gunshot wound.

Detectives canvassed the area for video, hoping to get a clearer picture of what happened. This is considered the parking lot of a 275 shooter. So we knew that there was video cameras from the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. So there's some special constables on scene that provided access to those cameras. The video that initially we got on scene from this building was at a distance. So we knew

We knew there was activity within the car. We narrowed it down to a time frame. But we had to get better images and better video closer up to actually get good video of our suspects. The best cameras, the closer, because it's closer to the Sherbourne address, were the ones along the walkway and pointing this way from that building. The video reveals two individuals who police say are the suspects arrive separately at the area before the victim.

One is on foot and the other in a vehicle, which he parks in a nearby lot. When the victim, Mohammed Ahmed, arrives, he parks at 275 Shooter.

The two suspects use this pathway to walk to the victim's car. The victim's outside of the vehicle at this point and they have a brief interaction that appears by all accounts to be friendly and they all, all three enter the car. They're in there for a fairly short time, minutes, before the two suspects

exit the vehicle and they walk this way towards this footpath that connects this parking lot of 275 Shooter over to the rear of where Dollarama is. And they're parked over in this parking lot area. Can you see all this on camera? Yeah, you can see a good portion of this whole area including a little bit of the laneway.

And the suspects enter the vehicle and then they pull out of the parking spot and they drive down this laneway. Are they driving fast or not particularly? Not particularly fast, nothing that would draw like anybody's attention. Detectives track the vehicle eastbound along Shooter, then north on the Don Valley Parkway. But that's where the trail goes cold. Sometimes we get lucky and we're able to

make our license plates using the video and depending on the clarity of the video and it gave us one who the vehicle belonged to and we were able to identify this was a rental vehicle

and who had rented the vehicle. It had been rented to Mr. Abdullahi weeks before the homicide occurred. We identified Mr. Abdullahi the same night as the homicide occurred. Approximately four days later, we're able to identify Yasir Muhammad as the second suspect. Because it's daytime and the clarity of the video, like, there's no disputing who was involved.

With the names of the suspects now in hand, Detectives Thiepen Vilvanathan and Julia Hung wondered how Mohammed Ahmed had become a victim of gun violence. Making big financial decisions is never easy. Whether you're buying a home, renewing your insurance or collecting your pension, there are so many things you need to think about. Having confidence in the financial services professionals and institutions you're working with is critical.

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A few miles from the glass spires of midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility, nicknamed Cop City. At approximately 9 o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property, an individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper.

This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance. The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down. Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest of everybody in my life. And the lengths we'll go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts. Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

I've been a homicide detective for almost five years now. It can be extremely busy, but everybody in our unit loves what they do. It's a different type of work because you don't have a victim to speak on their own behalf. That's our job at the end of the day really is to tell the story of the victim and what happened to them.

A parking lot in Toronto's Moss Park neighbourhood is behind police tape after the city's latest homicide. When I went, rode by there before they put the caution tape up, all I see was a man slumped over in the car. I wasn't sure when we were arriving on the scene what we were going to see. But when we arrived, there were more and more people gathering in the area, I think.

The community started to hear who the victim may have been. The victim has roots in Regent Park, a neighborhood that borders Moss Park. I'd just seen him the day before prior to that happening, so when I seen it on the news, I was shocked. And then just in a blink of eye like that, he's deceased. You know, shot in a car. I don't know if it's his car or it was somebody else's car, but in broad daylight to add that is disgusting to me. And I hope whoever did it does.

That's Qadar Ahmed. He's a Regent Park resident.

Mohamed Ahmed, he's very cool. We went to Nelson Mandela Park Public School together. He was outgoing, friendly, loving. He loved sports. We played basketball together. We played soccer together. Regent Park is filled with many murals and this mural over here is one of our Regent Park champions, Mustafa the Poet. He's done a lot of good things in Regent Park. Picture this: a single rose in a run-down park.

That's young Mustafa, a poet turned Juno Award-winning musician. His words capture the essence of the community he grew up in and the grief of losing close friends to violence. It's soon discovered that Moss Park's latest victim is his older brother. Mustafa expressed his sorrow online. My big brother, now and then, and in the life coming after this. The ground is missing. I have lost the way.

They killed my brother in the very community I gave my life to. Here's my faith on a platter. It won't return. Here's a magnifying glass and nothing but air in front of it. The family is very well known in the community. They have a good reputation within the community for helping people, for helping youth. It was a very difficult day for this family.

It appears as though they did know each other. And I just want to let you know that to make sure that the public's aware that this is not a random shooting. It's a very personal thing, isn't it, to get into a vehicle and fire, I think you said three shots? Yes. At close range. Yes. It's believed, based on the investigation, that Mr. Ahmed

was acquaintances at minimum with Mr. Abdullahi. It appeared that he was comfortable with them and would not have been expecting this to happen. So it did seem personal. About two weeks after the shooting, police find the suspect vehicle, abandoned about 30 minutes west of the crime scene.

We were able to seize that vehicle and process it for forensic evidence as well. The hunt for the two men who police say were last seen driving that vehicle is still on.

How urgent is it to get these men off the street? It's very urgent. They're armed, they're dangerous. This happened in the middle of the day, in the middle of a community with lots of people around. That's concerning to us as police that they'd be that brazen and then just to walk away as if nothing happened. So we've been urgently trying to locate them

using every resource that we have available to us. Even a year later, there isn't people hanging out here, having a coffee or playing cards. It does affect the community as to where they feel safe or where they want to hang out and enjoy a day like today. It's brazen shootings like this that prompted community worker Louis March to take action. Zero gun violence movement started

June the 21st, 2013, that was after we had the shooting in the Eden Center in the food court after we had the shooting at the community barbecue, dancing where innocent people were shot just having a good time. We started off as a 90-day summer initiative, but after day 90, we realized that we had no clue about the magnitude and depth of the problem itself.

A deadly triple shooting near Dundas in Parliament. An afternoon shooting in the area of Jane Street and Driftwood Avenue has left one person dead. Police officers are still collecting evidence here at Bathurst and Wilson. The reality today is that you could go shopping. You could be taking the garbage out at night. You could be on TTC, right? Those safe zones have been breached. We need to be in communities, not after the shooting, before the shooting, right? We need active action.

programs, active plans, and people showing up. And it's concerning because for every shooting, we ask the question, could it have been prevented if we showed up on time? And clearly we're showing up late. But as we get a better understanding of the changing demographic, the characteristics of gun violence, the bragging, the boasting, the threatening on social media, we need to be in that field. We need to be in that game.

not as a result of something happening before it happens. As detectives piece together what happened here, they look to the community for help. It's a mix of high residential, quite a few shelters, and it brings some challenges when it comes to people struggling with addiction, mental health, and then there's lots of mixed income housing as well.

I can appreciate they have to continue to live in this community. You know, we're not looking for more evidence. We have the evidence to prosecute this case. We're simply looking to locate them. People can call Crime Stoppers, they can submit anonymous tips and contribute to, again, a safer community for everybody.

No more silence and gun violence. A rally cry in Toronto's Regent Park just blocks away from where Mohammed Ahmed was gunned down. No more silence and gun violence. This march, hosted by Mothers of Peace Regent Park, falls on the National Day Against Gun Violence, and just weeks before the one-year anniversary of Mohammed Ahmed's murder.

We lost so many lives in the community, so this needs to stop. Enough is enough. Collectively we need to be loud and clear that we cannot afford to lose any more lives.

If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday.

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When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he?

I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover, available now. Crystal Ranger's life was changed forever when her 15-year-old son Jeremiah was fatally shot behind the Toronto Community Housing Complex where he lived. His killer was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the case. Jeremiah was shot a day before my birthday, April 26, 2020. I now have four living children.

They have suffered tremendously. It's a challenge. As a mother, you want to help your children. You want to do whatever you can do for them. It's different looking in their eyes and knowing that seeing that loss and not being able to fix it, it's hard. The impact on the family when something like this happened, you can't imagine, right? There's no course that you take to prepare you for this.

There's no words that can be said that eases the pain, the grief, the agony. There's nothing that can be said. The ripple effect is incredible. So there's the families, there's the friends, the overall community walking the streets at night, looking over your shoulder instead of looking where you're going. This is the impact in Moss Park and other places across the city if these issues are not solved.

With the suspects in this case still on the streets, detectives have turned to Bolo for help. Why is this case one that you thought needed this kind of attention? I think it has something to do with how brazen the shooting was, what time of day it happened at. The family is looking to hold these people accountable, specifically...

Mohammed Abdullahi is dangerous. He's been convicted of firearms offenses. In my opinion, he needs to be taken off the street. This is a violent individual that needs to be held accountable for the crimes that he's committed. How do you think Abdullahi is evading arrest? I do believe that there are people that are assisting him.

detectives are still trying to determine the motive for the shooting. You said these two suspects are wanted for first-degree murder. Why do you believe it's first-degree? In my experience and my belief is that they had the intention going into that vehicle as to what was going to happen that day. And ultimately, they showed up with a gun

Mr. Ahmed was shot and it's my belief that that was planned and deliberate. Police are asking you to be on the lookout for Mohamed Abdullahi. He's one of two suspects wanted for first-degree murder in connection with the 2023 shooting death of 36-year-old Mohamed Ahmed in Toronto.

Police say he has ties to the area, but also the east and west coasts of Canada and outside of the country in Somalia. He has short black hair, brown eyes, and is about 5'10". He weighs around 190 pounds. If you have any information, you can call Crimestoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS or submit a tip online.

We'll include this information in our show notes. We would like to dedicate this episode to Louis March, founder of the Zero Gun Violence Movement, who you heard in this episode. He passed away on July 20th, 2024, just weeks after our interview.

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Killer message to you yesterday? This is so dangerous. I got to get out of this. Based on a true story. New season Mondays at 9 Eastern and Pacific. Only on W. Stream on Stack TV. Thank you for listening. Crime Beat Most Wanted is hosted by me, Tracy Tong. Reporting in this episode is by Catherine McDonald. Adapted to podcast by our senior producer, Dila Velasquez. With help from associate producer, Elizabeth Sargent. Audio and sound design by Rob Johnson.

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