murder of coptic girl
m shehata
mississauag?
malek
Rudy A Carrera
>Where?
Richard
>
> can someone tell me any info on death of the coptic girl from
> mississauag?
Where?
> malek
Richard
simsim
http://www.thestar.com/editorial/news/990629NEW01_CI-MURDER29.html
Birthday teen gunned down
SANDY IBRAHIM: END OF SCHOOL YEAR
Shot at fast food restaurant after night celebrating with girlfriends
By Sonia Verma and Harold Levy
Toronto Star Staff Reporters
Sandy Ibrahim was in the midst of living a teen dream, just days away
from her 17th birthday.
Happy after an advance celebration at her family's home, the popular
Mississauga girl crammed into her best friend's silver Audi and took off
for a night on the town.
All that came to an end when Ibrahim was shot to death after pulling
into a Burger King parking lot with her three girlfriends.
``Her parents are destroyed, totally destroyed,'' said Gilles
Arseneault, a relative from Montreal.
``They are exhausted and just can't talk about it.''
Ibrahim was the only teen standing outside the car in the parking lot of
the 24-hour fast food restaurant in the Kennedy Rd. and Steeles Ave. E.
in Markham about 3:30 a.m. yesterday when two men in a black Lincoln
Navigator pulled alongside the Audi and fired two blasts from a shotgun,
hitting Ibrahim once.
One of her friends managed to contact police on her cell phone.
Ibrahim died later at Markham Stouffville Hospital.
York Region police said the men in the black Lincoln had been seen at a
non-alcoholic club where the girls had been earlier that evening, but
added it's too early to tell if there had been an altercation.
``I don't know what kind of motive you can have to kill a 16-year-old
girl, to be honest with you,'' said Detective Sergeant Dennis
Mulholland.
Detectives say the Lincoln Navigator was stolen from Finch Ave. in North
York earlier yesterday morning.
The expensive sport utility vehicle had been seen at the club before the
shooting, detectives said. Police are searching for two men and a woman
who may have been in it.
``There are indications that the two men had been at the same club at
some point of time,'' Mulholland said. ``It's a little too early in the
investigation to say that there had been some trouble with these guys.''
The four teens had passed the time away at the Connection II Restaurant,
the non-alcoholic establishment on Dufferin St. at the Murray Ross
Parkway in North York, in a building formerly called the Shock Wave Nite
Club.
There was chaos at the club Sunday night, as dozens of police from
Toronto's 32 Division, supported by the force's Emergency Task Force,
started to close it down around 11 p.m. - a process that took several
hours - because of massive overcrowding.
The girls then went to the popular fast-food establishment, ordered
their food at the drive-through and parked in the nearby lot to enjoy
it.
Police say that's when the Lincoln pulled up to the car the girls were
in.
Mulholland said detectives are probing whether the Lincoln followed the
teenaged girls in the Audi from the club to the Burger King parking lot.
Asked whether the stolen car and the deliberateness of the shooting
indicated a planned execution, Mulholland said:
``Well, it's something we're certainly going to have to look at.''
He also said detectives didn't know whether Ibrahim was the intended
victim in the shooting.
Police found the Lincoln about 30 minutes after the killing. It had been
abandoned, its engine still running.
That was just two minutes after a York Region officer, involved in a
routine traffic stop, spotted the stolen vehicle.
``He was just two minutes away from stopping them,'' said Mulholland,
who heads the force's major crimes bureau.
``That was a heartbreaker.''
The vehicle was taken to an Ontario Provincial Police forensic lab for
identification.
Mulholland says it's extraordinary that no one else was killed, given
the shotgun that was used, because there could have been as many as
eight teenagers in the line of fire.
``With the type of weapon used, I am surprised that there were not more
victims,'' he said.
A flood of relatives and friends poured into the slain teen's
three-storey Fox Hill Court home yesterday in the Erin Mills Parkway and
Erin Centre Dr. area of Mississauga yesterday.
Unable to contain their grief, they cried and consoled each other,
filling the quiet air of the tree-lined streets, with the sound of their
pain.
Ibrahim's family, who are of Egyptian descent, is actively involved in
Mississauga's Orthodox Coptic community. Ibrahim regularly attended St.
Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church, where she was enrolled in a Bible study
course. She has a younger brother.
Ibrahim's death has sent a shockwave through her neighbourhood - an
affluent new subdivision, where the homes have three-car garages housing
BMWs and Mercedes.
``I totally shocked, I remember her as always happy, with lots of
friends coming over and parties all the time,'' said her 18-year old
neighbour, Katie Pitz.
``She was just learning how to drive, and my younger brother used to
play with Sandy's little brother,'' said Pitz, whose family moved into
the neighbourhood about three years ago.
Across the street lives 17-year-old Kelly Berar, who was in the car when
Sandy was shot. She spent the morning at Sandy's home and hadn't slept
yet.
``She's pretty shaken still. It was quite an ordeal and she's not ready
to talk about it,'' her 18-year-old sister Monique said after
reluctantly opening the door.
Kelly watched her sister quietly from the second-floor landing,
clutching the banister.
Ibrahim had just finished her Grade 11 exams at St. John Fraser
Secondary School, just north of Erin Mills Town Centre on Erin Mills
Parkway and Erin Centre Blvd.
``She was such a nice person, she was very kind and outgoing, and always
happy,'' said Zaffar Janjua, who had attended school with Ibrahim since
the fourth grade.
He was at the same club as Ibrahim and her friends Sunday night, but
didn't run into them.
``I wish I had a chance to see her last night,'' he said, looking
anxiously at the Ibrahim house.
``They didn't just kill a person, they killed a community,'' cried a
relative, who did not want to be identified.
``She was a very charming girl, a real Christian,'' said Father Maximos
Rizkalla, who knew Sandy from church and spent the day with the family.
``She never had any problems with drugs or anything like that,''
Rizkalla said, clutching a wooden cross.
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With files from Stuart Weinberg