Crown lawyers are expected to begin their closing remarks today in the first-degree murder trial of Ibrahim Ali. Ali pleaded not guilty in April to murdering a 13-year-old girl, who was found dead in a Burnaby park in July 2017. The jury heard from about 50 Crown witnesses throughout the trial, but Ali’s lawyer told them last week that the defence would not be calling any evidence because the Crown hadn’t proved Ali’s guilt. Closing arguments from the defence are expected to follow the Crown’s remarks, and the judge has told the jury they will likely begin deliberations next week.
The Speaker of British Columbia’s legislature says the 125-year-old building is the largest symbol of colonialism in the province. Speaker Raj Chouhan says a ceremony to install Indigenous language signs at the front of the building represents a necessary step towards opening doors that have been historically closed. Hereditary Chief Edward Thomas says the legislature grounds were once the site of an Indigenous village but people were moved to make way for the building. Chouhan says he will make it his priority to ensure that the legislature becomes a more welcome and inclusive place.
Vancouver police say their investigation into a widely shared social media post about an alleged sex assault earlier this month has determined it was a case of misinformation. The department says the post “stoked community fear” after alleging the woman had been abducted, sexually assaulted and severely beaten before being left in a park elsewhere in the city. But, police say officers found, through witness interviews and security footage, that the woman had actually fallen off an electric scooter and hit her face on the pavement. The department says the woman, who was visiting from Mexico, was taken to the hospital and has since returned home.
BC’s Health Ministry says Vancouver Coastal Health will set up a clinical space adjacent to St. Paul’s Hospital to help those who want to use medical assistance in dying while they are being treated at the medical centre. It says this is a workaround so the hospital can continue to refuse to opt out of medical assistance in dying because it goes against the teachings of the Catholic Church. The clinical space will be staffed by Vancouver Coastal Health’s health-care professionals and will be connected by a corridor to St. Paul’s Hospital. Patients from St. Paul’s accessing MAID will be discharged by Providence Health and transferred to the care of Vancouver Coastal Health in this new clinical space, which is expected to be completed in August 2024.
Mounties in Squamish say a man has been charged in a 2022 hit and run that left one woman dead and another severely injured. The crash happened September 2nd, 2022, when the driver of a pickup truck lost control navigating a corner and the vehicle flipped over a sidewalk and landed on a bus stop, pinning two women who were sitting there. Police say 44-year-old Gurpreet Sangha died in hospital, while the second woman survived with “life-altering injuries.” The Mounties say they arrested a man earlier this month and six charges have now been approved against him, including impaired driving causing death and failure to stop after an accident causing death.
The BC Centre for Disease Control says travellers who were at Vancouver International Airport last Thursday might have been exposed to measles, and that people who are unvaccinated are at the highest risk. The centre says a passenger with measles spent time at YVR on November 23rd and was in both international and domestic terminals. It says the passenger travelled to Vancouver from Dubai on Air Canada Flight 79 and left the airport on Air Canada Flight 206 that day and later tested positive for measles in Alberta. The centre says measles is a highly infectious disease that can be spread through the air.