Two men on trial for the fatal shooting of a stranger sitting in his parked car outside his Scarbrough home four years ago have been found guilty of first-degree murder.
Leighton Hopkinson and Jordan Mendez have been charged with the June 2021 first-degree murder of Keron Brathwaite and the attempted murder of Braithwaite’s friends, Derka Ali-Best and Leonardo Miller, who were also passengers in Brathwaite’s Mercedes.
Brathwaite suffered 19 gunshot wounds and five graze gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Ali-Best, who was in the front passenger seat, suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder but survived. Miller was not struck.
The jury took just over a day to reach their verdict. First-degree murder is an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
The decision came down Tuesday night following a five-week trial.
As Mendez was being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, Mendez said to Hopkinson with a smirk on his face, “I’ve been in this situation before.”
Assistant Crown prosecutors argued at trial that that the killing of Brathwaite was planned and deliberate.
The Crown told the jury in its closing address that while we don’t know why the killing happened, motive is not something the Crown must prove. “Was it a case of mistaken identity? Was it a message sent to the neighbourhood? I wish I had an answer to that question,” Hickey said.
Hickey said the evidence reveals that Mendez and Hopkinson drove into the area of Scarborough Golf Club Road and Lawrence Avenue in the early morning hours of June 11, 2021, and killed Brathwaite in a hail of bullets.
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Both men were shooting at the time and admitted to being the occupants of the Jeep on the witness stand.
The shooters were inside a rented silver Jeep Cherokee with stolen plates. Both Hopkinson and Mendez admitted on the stand to being in the vehicle at the time of the shooting. Both were armed.
Hopkinson testified in his defence that, in a fit of rage, he opened fire after seeing a Mercedes-Benz that he believed belonged to someone else.
Just hours before the shooting, he claimed, the mother of his child told him that her ex-boyfriend, who also drove a Mercedes, had assaulted her.
Hopkinson told the jury he was furious and, upon seeing what he thought was that man’s car, began shooting.
Hopkinson claimed he believed the vehicle was unoccupied. He admitted to firing two separate handguns.
“It was unplanned and unexpected,” said Hopkinson’s lawyer, Craig Zeeh, in closing arguments.
Mendez, meanwhile, testified that he was merely a passenger in the Jeep and denied taking part in the shooting. He admitted he was carrying a Glock 17 at the time but claimed he never fired it.
Mendez’s lawyer, Saman Wickramasinghe, argued there was an “evidentiary deficit” in the case, pointing to a lack of forensic or eyewitness evidence tying Mendez to the actual shooting.
“There is no proof that Mr. Mendez fired a gun, or that he assisted Mr. Hopkinson,” he said.
The jury was not told about Mendez’s previous conviction in a separate homicide.
In 2013, he was found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Joel Waldon. That conviction was later overturned by the Court of Appeal, and at his 2019 retrial, Mendez admitted to firing the fatal shots but claimed self-defence.
He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years, with 12 years and 7.5 months credited for pretrial custody, leaving just over two years to serve.
The jury was also not made aware that both men are still facing charges in another homicide: the killing of 29-year-old Trurell Brown, who was shot multiple times and found dead in Ajax on June 2, 2021, just nine days before Brathwaite’s murder.
That trial ended in a mistrial last December, and the charges remain outstanding.
A new trial has been scheduled for Hopkinson in March.
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