Guilty plea in deadly shooting sends Windsor jury home early

A Windsor jury was sent home on Monday following an unexpected guilty plea in the trial tied to a fatal shooting in 2021. CTV's Michelle Maluske reports.

A Windsor jury was sent home today following an unexpected guilty plea in the trial tied to a fatal shooting in 2021.

On Monday, Abdishakur Harun, 37, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of Percy Basil Scott, 44.

A panel of residents were waiting in a separate courtroom to start a second-degree murder trial, but hey were sent home after Harun’s guilty plea.

Harun was in the backseat of Scott’s vehicle on Nov. 18, 2021, driving towards downtown Windsor.

Court learned Harun’s loaded handgun “discharged through the back of the driver’s seat.”

Scott was struck in the left buttock. The injury caused him to drive his SUV head-on into a parked SUV on Dougall Avenue north of University Avenue.

“Mr. Harun intentionally discharged a second shot in the vehicle which hit Mr. Scott in the face, on his right cheek,” Lerren Ducharme, the Assistant Crown Attorney, told Justice Jacqueline Horvat on Monday.

Civilian witnesses saw the collision and tried to help Scott.

Paramedics rushed him to hospital, but he was pronounced dead while in care.

“Mr. Harun fled with the firearm in his hand and discarded the handgun in a recycling bin in the alley behind 445 Pelissier Street,“ Ducharme explained.

Harun, meantime fled Windsor, but police were able to track his cellphone to a hotel on Highway 401 near London just one day after the shooting.

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) arrested Harun, returned him to Windsor, and he has been in custody ever since.

Handgun recovered

A downtown Windsor resident was searching through garbage and recycling bins in the alley behind Pelissier Street four days after the shooting.

The man found a loaded handgun - with defaced serial numbers - in a bin and noticed there were only seven bullets in the cartridge; one was in the chamber and two bullets were missing.

“(The man) heard there had been a shooting in the area in which someone had been shot twice,” Ducharme told the court. “This led him to believe that the firearm may have been involved in the shooting on Dougall Avenue.”

The man placed the gun in a milk bag and brought it to Windsor Police Service Headquarters.

Scott’s blood was found on the handgun, but it’s not clear if Harun’s fingerprints were on it.

Court learned, at the time of the shooting, Harun was in the middle of a 10-year ban on owning any weapons and he was under a bail order to not possess any weapons.

A date for Harun’s sentencing will be selected next week.

His lawyers have asked the pre-sentence report “consider Morris factors,” which is a cultural assessment meant to take into consideration an offender’s background and personal history including potential experiences with anti-Black racism.