Lawyers defending Brianna Warner, on trial for the first-degree murder of a Toronto rapper in December 2022, said what Warner told her mother and a friend named TJ about the shooting was just a story and not the truth.
TJ, who was in fact an undercover Toronto Police officer who was wearing a secret recording device, testified last Thursday that she was in a car with Warner and Warner’s mother on April 6, 2023, when the mother and daughter got into an argument and Warner told her mom “she shot that guy in the head.”
The following day, on April 7, 2023, TJ was in Warner’s bedroom on a deployment to get more information about the shooting of Jai Parker-Ford, also known as rapper “Aveboy Sk.” TJ testified Warner said she shot Parker-Ford in the back of the head, then ran down the hallway before going back to see if he had a gun and did it alone.
Warner also told TJ she had written a rap called “Brain Dead” about the shooting of Jai-Parker Ford. The secret recordings were played in court last week. At one point, the undercover officer can be heard reading the lyrics of “Brain Dead” out loud, as she asks Warner about the shooting.
Warner’s lawyers Katie Scott and John Filiberto told jurors in their closing address Tuesday that Warner’s words and writings are not supported by the evidence.
“It is our submission it is a false confession, an inaccurate confession, an unreliable confession,” Scott told the jury, calling it a story made-up by an 18-year-old girl.
It was Dec. 16, 2022 when police were called to the 14th floor of an apartment building at 3950 Lawrence Ave. E. When officers arrived, they found 20-year-old Parker-Ford lying in the hallway outside his family’s apartment suffering from a single gunshot wound to the head. Parker-Ford died a few days later in hospital.
Scott said Warner’s story contradicts the evidence.
“In our submission, she would not have had time to shoot, run down the hallway, back down the hallway, search his pockets, all while doing this quietly. His brother said all he heard was moaning,” Scott said.
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Scott recalled the first officer on the scene said it took up to five first responders to pick Parker-Ford up.
“Does that accord with her statement that she went back and searched his pockets? That’s inaccurate we say,” Scott said.
Scott was also critical of the undercover officer who testified about her deployment on April 7th to investigate Warner’s statement further from the day before.
“She was unsuccessful in getting any information that wasn’t already in the public sphere,” argued Scott.
She pointed out that Parker-Ford was in the hospital a couple of days before succumbing to his gunshot wound and friends would have known he took one bullet to the back of the head that exited through the front.
“TJ, despite having every opportunity to ask, she did not clarify very crucial information,” Scott said. “What was she wearing? What jacket? What pants? Gloves? What kind of gun? She failed to ask how she got in? What floor Parker-Ford lived on? What he was wearing? Yet she didn’t do any of that.”
Scott said the lyrics of “Brain Dead,” the rap Warner told TJ about which was found in her bedroom after her arrest, was artistic self-expression.
She reminded the jury about Parker-Ford whom his brother testified rapped about guns, murder and illegal activity.
“He puts on a persona to advance his career, for street cred. It’s literary artistic expression. Think of Bob Marley’s song ‘I shot the Sheriff.’ It doesn’t mean he did it,” said Scott.
Defence lawyers also argue that the video surveillance showing a person crown prosecutors say is seen coming to and leaving the scene is not Warner.
“The Crown has provided no forensic evidence that Brianna Warner was at the scene or even in the building on that day,” said Scott.
“Brianna Warner did not commit first-degree murder. She was not the one who shot Jai Parker-Ford.”
Crown prosecutors Rob Fried and Perry Rutherford told the jury that Warner not only shot a boy in the back of the head, but wrote about it twice.
“In the ‘Brain Dead’ document and the ‘Avboy SK’ document, both found in her house,” said Fried.
“Everything you hear in those recordings is accurate,” Fried explained. “On April 6, she tells her own mother in the car she “shot that guy in the head.’ The next day, she gleefully tells TJ, she shot him in the back of the head, she could see the hole and she did it alone.”
Prosecutors also pointed to circumstantial evidence, including Snapchat messages between Parker-Ford’s phone and someone they submit is Warner, in the hours and minutes leading up to the shooting about meeting up at his building right before he’s shot dead.
Fried said pants with a small white symbol on them were found in Warner’s home after her arrest are the same pants worn by the person seen on video surveillance going to and from the crime scene.
“The evidence identifying her as the killer is overwhelming. The evidence this was planned and deliberate is obvious,” said Fried, arguing Warner lured Parker-Ford out of his home and shot him in the back of his head as he walked out of his apartment door towards the elevator.
“I suspect she thought she got away with it. Would anyone suspect a small 18-year-old girl could pull this off? Until police got creative and TJ befriended her. Brianna Warner has enjoyed the presumption of innocence for two-and-a-half years. It’s not time to find her guilty,” said Fried.
The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday.
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