Global News has obtained key court exhibits from the trial of the two men who pleaded guilty last week to the 2022 contract killing of Ripudaman Singh Malik.
The evidence offers new insight into the events surrounding the killing of one of the men charged and acquitted in the 1985 Air India bombing.
Tanner Fox and Jose Lopez were originally charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder. An agreed statement of facts included in the plea revealed the pair had been paid to kill Malik.
Left unclear by the plea deal is the motive and the mastermind behind the killing.
Malik remained a polarizing figure in Canada until his death.
He and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri made international headlines after they were acquitted of mass murder in 2005, two decades after the Air India bombings that killed 331 people, mostly from the Vancouver and Toronto areas.
The newly-released evidence includes security and video and traffic camera images tracing the movement of Malik’s killers on July 13 and July 14, the day of the murder.
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In one video, the pair are captured leaving a rental suite the day before the murder, wearing distinctive clothing that was later seized by police.
Lopez was dressed in a t-shirt bearing the script “Just do it,” while Fox wore bright red runners and carried a Puma backpack.
At the time, the killers were on their way to spend 17 minutes scoping out the site where they would later shoot Malik to death.
The next morning, July 14, 2022, Malik was shot seven times, most bullets hitting him in the head and neck, while sitting in the driver’s seat of his Tesla in front of his Surrey business.
Fox and Lopez then fled in a stolen white Honda CRV, before dumping and torching the getaway vehicle.
Nearly two weeks later, however, police seized a mountain of evidence in the killers’ rental suite, inside the Puma backpack
According to the agreed statement of facts entered in court, the two men’s DNA was found on two masks and a glove.
Bullet casings found next to Malik’s vehicle were traced to two handguns seized by police.
Police also found more than $16,000 in cash at Lopez’ home.
The actual price the men were paid to kill Malik has never been revealed.
Fox and Lopez’s are due to appear in court again on Thursday via video link to set a date for their sentencing hearings.
The two men will be sentenced separately after they were involved in a violent courtroom brawl with one another after pleading guilty last week.
— with files from Rumina Daya
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.