Final sentences handed out in 2019 shooting death of Coby Carter

The plan to kill Hamilton drug dealer Coby “Kareem” Carter involved at least four people.

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Now, almost five-and-a-half years after Carter’s violent death in downtown Brantford, two of those responsible have been sentenced, neither of them the shooter in the case.

Two others who were charged, one the accused shooter and one allegedly who ordered the hit, are dead, allegedly due to jailhouse overdoses.

“He was 21 years old and had a daughter he loved,” Carter’s brother said at the sentencing hearings about his brother.

On July 8, 2019, Carter was lured out of a Colborne Street apartment near the Lorne Bridge to make an apparent drug deal but, according to facts read into the court record, Abdelaziz Ibrahim was hiding in a nearby alley.

“(Ibrahim) was overheard asking what door ‘Kareem’ would be exiting from,” said assistant Crown attorney Ed Slater.

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“He pulled the drawsstrings of his hoodie tight, obscuring his face and hiding in a small lane-way next to the building, essentially out of sight.”

Surveillance video showed Carter negotiating a deal when Ibrahim emerged from behind him, aimed a laser-sighted gun at him and shot Carter in the head.

“Ibrahim approached and fired more shots into (Carter’s) body before fleeing,” Slater said.

The targeted shooting happened just 10 days before the shocking double homicide of Larry Reynolds and Lynn Van Every. A special investigation – Project Grantham – was begun to unravel the three deaths and, about a year later, police offered a reward for information in Carter’s death.

In June, 2021, almost two years after Carter’s death, police charged Ibrahim, pointing to him as the shooter in the case.

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In March 2022, Brantford’s Thomas Sliwinski, 43, and Tina Flear, 46, were also charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Then charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder were announced against Brantford’s Salloum Jassem, with an accusation that he had ordered the contract killing of Carter.

Ibrahim, Sliwinski and Jassem were also among those charged in the organized crime killing of a Toronto tow-truck operator in 2018.

Jassem was also accused of being the drug dealer who ordered a hit on Brantford’s Roger Van Every which went tragically wrong, ending with the deaths of Van Every’s innocent parents, Larry Reynolds and Lynn Van Every, and murder charges against seven men.

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After Ibrahim died in the Lindsay jail in August, 2022, Jassem, Sliwinski and Flear moved toward trials.

But, in August, after attending court for preliminary matters, Jassem was found dead the following morning in Maplehurst Correctional Complex.

His lawyer said she considered his death suspicious as he was upbeat about finally facing trial.

With Jassem’s death, Sliwinski and Flear quickly made deals with the Crown lawyers, said Slater, ending pre-trial motions and what was to be a lengthy and complex trial.

In September, Sliwinski pleaded guilty to manslaughter for his role, admitting he told Ibrahim that Carter was selling drugs in Brantford and details that led to Carter’s death.

Sliwinski was sentenced in a Kitchener court to six years in prison – but that sentence was added to the current sentence he’s serving for manslaughter of the Toronto tow-truck operator and pointing a firearm at a lawyer.

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For those crimes, he received a 12-year sentence. In 2023, Sliwinski also was sentenced in a Brantford court on possession of stolen property and drugs for trafficking. He received a two-year sentence.

His lawyer said Sliwinski’s criminal record had been minor before he got involved with the group running drugs in Brantford.

“He didn’t drive the trigger-man there or drive him away. He passed on information,” said the lawyer.

Sliwinski offered condolences to Carter’s family members.

“I was an addict and a drug dealer and I was something else,” he told the court.

“That ‘something else’ is why I’m here today and why so many terrible things have happened around me. I’ll do everything in my power to never be in this situation again.”

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In October, Flear was sentenced after pleading guilty to manslaughter in a Hamilton courtroom.

She admitted that, as a friend of Carter, she had lured him to the street for a drug deal and to his death. When Carter came out of the apartment building, he hugged Flear in greeting.

While Slater said Flear had been a “pawn” in the shooting, he noted that she knew harm could come to her friend.

“She didn’t know Salloum Jassem had put out a hit on Mr. Carter or that there might be some competition in the Brantford drug game. (But) he was her ‘street brother’ and that relationship was abused.

“There’s no indication she tried to warn him .. and when he was shot, she fled rather than trying to check on him.”

In both sentencing hearings, it was noted that Flear herself could have been in danger because the gunshots aimed at Carter also put her in the line of fire.

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Flear’s defense attorney, Alison MacDonald, said her client, a mother of five children, wasn’t a “hardened criminal” but someone who had been caught up in a crack cocaine addiction and was left fearing for her own life after the shooting.

“I’m sorry to Coby’s parents,” Flear said at her sentencing hearing.

“I loved him too, just like they did.”

With her four-year sentence all but fulfilled by time already served, Flear begged the judge not to send her back to jail for the final six days of it but Justice Paul Sweeny denied her request.

“It will be a difficult road ahead but you owe it to your children, your grandchildren and the memory of Coby Carter to remain sober and be a positive, contributing member of society,” said Sweeny.

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