Teen testifies he tried to steer friend away from fatal confrontation outside Halifax mall

A close friend of Ahmad Al Marrach testified Monday he tried to discourage the 16-year-old boy from participating in a prearranged fight outside a Halifax shopping mall that led to his death last spring.

Al Marrach was stabbed in a parking garage at the Halifax Shopping Centre early on the evening of April 22, 2024. He died later in hospital.

Four teenagers — three boys and one girl — were each originally charged with second-degree murder. Two have since pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and are to be sentenced in separate hearings in March.

In a Halifax courtroom Monday at the trial of one of the two other teens accused in Al Marrach's death, the friend testified he and Al Marrach had known each other from the time they arrived in Canada in 2016 as refugees.

Like all young witnesses in this Nova Scotia youth court trial, his identity is protected by a publication ban.

The friend told the court he received a text from Al Marrach early on the afternoon of April 22 telling him about the fight. He said he tried to persuade Al Marrach to skip the fight and go to a mosque to pray instead. But he said Al Marrach insisted he had to fight.

Other witnesses have testified Al Marrach and the teen who's the subject of this trial had argued over social media about a girl they were both interested in and agreed to meet at the mall to fight. But this witness suggested it could also have been about things one of the other accused said about Al Marrach's family. He did not specify what that might have been.

The witness said he and some other friends of Al Marrach waited at a nearby Tim Hortons for word that the fight had started. When they were told, they ran to the parkade.

The witness said when he arrived at the fight, he was confronted by two teens brandishing knives who prevented them from getting too close. At that point, he said, Al Marrach was grappling with one attacker while the teenage girl — one of the accused who has pleaded guilty to manslaughter — was kicking him.

He said one of the two teens with knives shouted "Do you want to get killed?"

Under cross-examination, the witness admitted the teen who is on trial did not make threats, but simply held a knife, waving it in a slashing motion.

When pressed further by defence lawyer Anna Mancini, the witness retracted his testimony about the slashing motion and said the threats came from the other teen who was brandishing a knife. That teen has also pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

After Al Marrach was stabbed, people scattered. The witness said he left the parkade and headed for the bus terminal across the street.

He said he boarded a bus but discovered two of the accused, including the one now on trial, were already on board. The witness said he left the bus and spoke to a transit supervisor who advised him to talk to police, who by that time had started arriving at the parkade.

Police witnesses who testified earlier in the trial said they intercepted a Halifax Transit bus on North Street and removed two suspects.

The friend also confirmed during cross-examination that he had some difficulty separating what he had actually seen that day from what he subsequently read on social media in discussion groups that were created after the stabbing.

The fourth teen charged in the case is scheduled to go to trial starting next month.