Jury must choose between accused and dead man in iPhone murder case

Jurors about to deliberate on the second-degree murder trial of MohamedSail were told Monday that they must decide whether it was Sail who shot Jeremy Cook, or Muhab Sultan, the only other suspect and the one who died before he could be brought to trial.

"This question is really the only question in this case," Justice Peter Hockin told jurorsin his charge, the final step before the six men and six women weresequestered in the11-day second-degree murder trial of Mohamed Sail.

"Did Mohamed Sail cause Jeremy Cook's death?" Hockin asked jurors."There sits within this question the identity of Jeremy Cook's killer."

The crux of the case lies with which of the two menpulled the trigger, since both men were in the car on the morning of June 14, 2015, whenCook was shot to death.

The jury heard how Cook had lost his cell phone in the back seat of a taxi cab while out drinking with friends the night before and when he realized he hadn't left it at home, used an online tracking app to pinpoint its location to a parking lot in northeast London, nearHighbury and Cheapside.

Cook's sister Kayla drove him to the parking lot where the siblings found three men in a Mazda 6. The man in the back seat was just leaving as the siblings arrived and the court had heard he was the one who initially found the phone. He gaveit to MohamedSail, who was in the passenger seat of MuhabSultan's Mazda 6.

When the siblings asked for the phone, MohamedSail refused to hand it over until Kayla Cook entered the security code in order to prove it was her brothers. Onceshe did, MuhabSultan stepped on the gas and peeled out of the parking lot, knocking Kayla over and prompting Jeremy Cook to loop his arms around the car's centre pillar through its windows and hangon even as the car sped down Highbury and into a parking lot.

"MuhabSultan was the shooter," MohamedSail's lawyer Sharon Jeethantold the jury during her closing arguments in the case Monday. "He floored the accelerator without warning."

"Sultan assaulted Ms. Cook with his car,"she said. "[Jeremy] Cook attached himself to it and Sultan kept driving."

Jeethan said that multiple witnesses had described a man with a white t-shirt and short dark hair and suggested it was Sultan, who was Cook's killer.

She also told jurors that while multiple witnesses had heard someone urgently scream "Drive! Drive!" after the two shots were fired, no-one could say for sure who did.

"The Crown says Sail uttered the words, but the fact is we don't know who uttered those words," Jeethan said.

The shooting happened in a parking lot. The Mazda belonging to Sultan was found after it crashed into a fence at a nearby apartment building. The phone was found abandoned nearby and both Sultan and Sail had fledthe scene.

Sail would eventually turn himself in to police in July. But Sultan drownedin the RideauRiver 10 days after the shooting while trying to evade arrest in Ottawa.

Jeethantold the the jury that it was Sultan who had a criminal record that included robbery, assault and drug possession. adding her client turned himself in while Sultan died trying to escape the law.

"This evidence should leave you with insurmountable reasonable doubt" Jeethan said. "He was running for his life and didn't care who he hurt."

The jury was sequestered later Monday afternoon. More to come.