Rexdale trucker murdered by co-worker in planned ambush: Crown
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Truck driver Pardeep Chouhan fatally shot Maninder Sandhu in a planned, brazen daylight ambush on Sept. 30, 2016, at their Rexdale parking lot, a prosecutor alleged on Friday.
In her opening statement, Crown attorney Andrea MacGillivray said Chouhan, now 37, and Sandhu were co-workers and close friends until early 2016 when Chouhan harboured ‘ill will’ towards his former pal.
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“He saw his opportunity for revenge and he took it,” said MacGillivray.
“Chouhan shot him five times with a shotgun at close range.”
Chouhan has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.
The Crown gave no potential motive for the killing in her opening.
Fellow truck driver Gary Chatha provided a possible motive.
He testified that a few months before the homicide, Chouhan said he thought Sandhu was having an affair with Chouhan’s sister-in-law.
Chatha said he didn’t believe him.
Sandhu was a “nice guy and a good-looking guy,” who kept himself in shape by regularly working out at the gym and practising yoga, said Chatha — adding that infidelity is “frowned upon in our culture.”
Chouhan’s lawyer Dirk Derstine said Chatha told police that Pardeep “thought someone was having an affair” with his brother’s wife, but didn’t name Sandhu as the other man.
Chatha explained that he was shocked by the slaying, and felt nervous and stressed as it was his first time giving a police interview.
In emotional testimony, Ranjit Kullar — Sandhu’s heart-broken and beautiful widow — recalled her last moments with her spouse.
She last remembered Sandhu playing with their one-year-old daughter the night before he was killed.
She spoke to him by phone at around 4:15 p.m. Friday just before he parked his rig at the Humber College Blvd. lot.
She never heard from him again.
By 10 p.m., she became extremely worried.
Shortly after 2 a.m., she and her father-in-law drove to her husband’s parking place.
She spotted his yellow Jeep vehicle parked beside his tractor.
“Ranjit, he’s here,” the father told her.
She started ‘screaming’ as soon as she saw his body.
“Maybe he fainted and I thought, ‘Why is there blood on his face and cuts on his stomach,” said Kullar.
His body was unusually hard, even for the muscular Sandhu, she testified.
She began hyperventilating. Paramedics offered to take her to the hospital, but she begged them to help her husband, she testified.
“I’m sorry, he’s deceased,” said the officer.
The trial resumes Monday.
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