Killer gets 15-year sentence for shooting Vancouver store owner in 2020

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Santana McElroy recalled Thursday how she sat on the sidewalk outside the Main Street Dank Mart after receiving the devastating news that the love of her life, Amin Shahin Shakur, had been shot and killed behind her store an hour earlier.

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At the time of the July 2020 murder, McElroy was unaware that she was pregnant with his daughter.

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Her voice cracked as she told British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Janet Winteringham that the girl will only meet her father in the photos.

“Our daughter doesn’t deserve to grow up without her father,” he told a sentencing hearing for her killer, Mohammad Abu-Sharife. “In addition to raising a daughter alone and trying to play both roles to the best of my ability, I have tremendous fear about our future. I worry about the effects this trauma will have on her as she gets older.”

In December, Abu-Sharife, 43, pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was originally charged with second degree murder.

Winteringham sentenced the 43-year-old man to 15 years for killing Shakur after a brief conversation in the alley behind the store.

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Crown Alex Burton and defense attorney Michael Shapray filed a joint sentencing submission on Thursday morning, which Winteringham cited in agreeing to the proposed term.

He said that “agreements of this nature are of vital importance” for the judicial system.

Winteringham said Abu-Sharife should never have carried a gun when he went out that night.

“This is a seriously serious crime.”

Burton read an agreed statement of the facts, as the families of both men sat in the gallery of the Vancouver Law Courts.

Just before 11 p.m. on July 13, Shakur and Dank Mart staff were unloading stock from their Mercedes Sprinter van in the alley behind the store at 6418 Main St.

Abu-Sharife, who had previously supplied cannabis to another of Shakur’s businesses and considered him a friend, arrived in a rented vehicle at around 11:10 p.m. and greeted Shakur.

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They talked for about six minutes before “the conversation turned heated and Mr. Abu-Sharife perked up.”

He then pulled a 9mm semi-automatic firearm from his hoodie pocket and shot Shakur four times, hitting him in the thigh, chest and back. One bullet hit his heart and lung.

“When shot at, Mr. Shakur initially stumbled forward, turned and ran… towards the store,” Burton said.

Abu-Sharife returned to his rental car, tossed the gun in a nearby dumpster and drove away. The shooting and his escape were captured on CCTV.

“In the store, Mr. Shakur died before the police or emergency services arrived,” Burton said. “Police recovered four bullet casings from the scene and the gun from inside the dumpster. Mr. Abu-Sharife’s DNA was recovered from the pistol’s frame grip, magazine and cartridges.”

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Burton said a 15-year sentence was appropriate because Abu-Sharife has a “high level of moral culpability.”

“The facts of this case in the agreed statement of the facts are closer to a murder than an accident,” he said. “The act of bringing the weapon to the meeting or subsequent confrontation with Mr. Shakur demonstrates intentional risk. Killing him was the consequential damage.”

He also cited Abu-Sharife’s criminal record. He was convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to commit murder after planning to use homemade explosives to kill rival drug dealers in the Lower Mainland.

In a phone call recorded by police, he told his accomplice that using explosives would be the most effective.

“At least this way we can take out a dozen people at a time,” he said. “I don’t care if you draw another block with it, it has to be done.”

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Shapray told Winteringham that at the time of the murder, Abu-Sharife was struggling with an addiction to opiates after being in a series of car accidents that left him in chronic pain.

And he said his client was only carrying a gun that night because he feared for his life after receiving a series of warnings from police about threats from his co-defendant in the earlier conspiracy case.

Abu-Sharife also made a statement expressing remorse, but suggested that Shakur had threatened him, something that was not in the evidence and which Winteringham said he did not factor into his decision.

But he said he believed Abu-Sharife regretted his actions and the impact it had had.

“I don’t question the sincerity of his apology or his remorse,” he said.

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