Sylvia Consuelo, a slight 34-year-old woman with long, dark hair, was found dead on the floor of her Etobicoke apartment in the early hours of Jan. 30, 2016. A bunch of unopened condoms had been scattered over her body and she had been sexually assaulted with an object.Three years later, a jury is set to decide whether Najib Amin, 31, murdered Consuelo because he believed — wrongly — that she was HIV-positive and had given HIV to three people through unprotected sex. There is no DNA evidence in the case, no fingerprints or an eyewitness to the murder.In closing arguments on Thursday, the case against Amin was described as entirely circumstantial and based mainly on two pieces of evidence: security footage from Consuelo’s building that shows Amin and the alleged murderer on different days wearing apparently identical clothing and secretly recorded conversations between Amin and undercover police officers during a months-long operation to see whether Amin would confess to killing Consuelo. Amin was captured on surveillance cameras entering the Kendleton Dr. apartment complex — three Toronto Community Housing buildings joined together by basement tunnels — on Jan. 24, 2016.On Jan. 30, 2016, three hours before Consuelo was found dead, a man enters the complex wearing what appear to be the same grey shoes, jeans, black leather jacket, black hat with white writing on it, and same striped shirt as Amin days before. Before entering the building the man pulls a scarf up over his face that the Crown argues is remarkably similar to one worn by a woman who was with Amin on Jan. 24. The man left the building just over an hour later, his face still covered. “Did someone break into Mr. Amin’s residence and raid his closet that day and just happen to steal and choose to wear these five, specific, distinctive pieces of clothing and then that person just happened to walk over to Sylvia Consuelo’s apartment,” said prosecutor Sc ...
|