Toronto man Malik Mbuyi has been found guilty of two counts of second degree murder at a Brantford court last week in the 2019 death of Lynn VanEvery and Larry Reynolds.
A judge declared Mbuyi was the shooter in the 2019 deaths of VanEvery and Reynolds at their Brantford home.
Mbuyi’s lawyers are expected to bring up Mbuyi’s past as a disenfranchised black youth growing up in Toronto during the shooter’s sentencing later this month.
A woman who tried to embrace him after the verdict was held back by guards in the courtroom last week.
The verdict came after several weeks of deliberation in the murder that involved seven suspects.
Justice Andrew Goodman said surveillance video showed that even though Mbuyi was wearing a mask, he believed Mbuyi’s body shape matched that of the shooter. The shooting occurred at the front door of the Park Road South home around 8 a.m. on July 19, 2019.
A number of men have already received guilty verdicts and sentences for various charges relating to the shooting.
Terrell Philbert, Dylan Alridge and Thomy Baez-Eusebio have all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit an indictable offence with a firearm.
Baez-Eusebio and Alridge were sentenced to time served, at 29 and 30 months, respectively.
Philbert got seven and a half years.
One man, Salloum Jassem, was acquitted of two counts of first-degree murder.
Kareem Zedan got 15 years for manslaughter.
Nathan Howes, the seventh man accused in the shooting, is still awaiting a verdict for two counts of first-degree murder.
Police said VanEvery, 62, and her husband, Reynolds, 64, were not the intended targets and were shot in a case of mistaken identity.
