Monday, November 26, 2012
Homicide detectives are investigating after a man's body was discovered on a sidewalk near 107th Avenue and 104th Street in Edmonton on November 24, 2012. Photograph by: Jason Franson , Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - An autopsy was to be performed Monday on the body of 43-year-old Temesgen Asfha, Edmonton’s latest homicide victim.
Asfha was found by a passerby face down on the ground on 107th Avenue near 104th Street about 2:15 a.m. Saturday.
Asfha appeared to have been stabbed, police.
A 38-year-old man, Ahmed Abdullahi Farah, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder and possession of a weapon in Asfha’s death.
It is the city’s 27th homicide of 2012.
In 2005, Farah was sentenced to 28 months in prison for sexual assault and unlawful confinement for his role in the gang rape of a teenage girl. At the time, he was also given a 10-year firearms ban.
Farah’s co-accused in that case was convicted in the sexual assault of another girl as well, but that girl could not identify the second attacker.
During those proceedings, court heard that Farah and his co-accused moved to Canada from Somalia in the early 1990s. Court of Queen’s Bench Justice June Ross said at the time that Farah and his co-accused showed “extreme contempt and disregard” for the victims, who were aged 15 and 17, and had been intoxicated at the time.
Farah and his co-accused had also been charged in connection with a pair of high-profile rapes in the north Edmonton in 2003, but the charges were dropped in one case, because the victim did not show up for the preliminary hearing. The charges in the second case were withdrawn after the victim gave conflicting testimony.