“Shiftless” Killer Gets 15 Years For Cold Blooded Murder
Posted June 16, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
For a mom who lost her son on Mother’s Day, no court decision will ever bring back what’s been taken from her.
But the family of a man killed over a simple argument saw a form of justice done in the courts Tuesday, after Walid Almaktari was sentenced to 15 years in jail for manslaughter.
He was originally charged with first-degree murder after the incident outside of a Pizza Pizza near Pape and Danforth on May 8, 2005. It was early in the morning when Sasha Bailey had his first encounter with Almaktari, when the two men apparently got into an argument. The fight ended but the hard feelings didn’t.
Almaktari couldn’t let it go and went to an apartment complex, grabbed a loaded gun and set out to get revenge. He and another man came back to the take-out restaurant, found Bailey still there with his friends, and planned to “intimidate or confront” the 22-year-old, according to the judge in the case.
But he wound up shooting the unsuspecting victim point blank instead, and both men fled as the echo of the bullets reverberated in the darkness. It took cops a few months to find Almaktari and it took years more to bring his case to a conclusion, following a five week trial.
