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The three people accused in two unrelated weekend homicides in London made brief court appearances Tuesday and will remain in custody while they secure legal representation.
London police on Saturday charged two 17-year-old males, who can’t be publicly identified under Canada’s youth justice law, with second-degree murder in connection with the June 21 killing of 18-year-old Abdul Hashim.
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Hashim, known to his friends as “Zeko,” was killed after he was stabbed at about 10 p.m. in the parking lot of the Southdale Road housing complex where he lived, just east of Millbank Drive, his grieving father, also named Abdul Hashim, told The Free Press.
A vigil in memory of Hashim, who died two days after graduating from Sir Wilfrid Laurier secondary school, was held Monday at the complex. Grieving friends remembered him as a hard-working teen with “a heart of gold” and dreams of making a mark in sports and engineering.
George Kenneth Curtis, 44, of London was also charged over the weekend with second-degree murder in the killing of Cheryl Sheldon, a 62-year-old London woman.
Sheldon died late on June 21 in the apartment friends told The Free Press she shared with Curtis, her boyfriend, at 345 Wharncliffe Rd. N., just north of the Wharncliffe Road-Western Road intersection. Police have said they responded to the apartment around midnight, where they found a woman with life-threatening injuries who later died in hospital.
A memorial for Sheldon was scheduled to be held on Tuesday night.
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Both deaths became London’s second and third homicides of the year.
In the case of Hashim’s death, one of the teens has applied for legal aid while the other is securing a lawyer, court heard on Tuesday. Both teens appeared via video from Sprucedale Youth Centre.
One case will return to court Wednesday while the other will return Thursday.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Curtis appeared via video from Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre.
A paralegal from London-based Snow Lawyers requested Curtis’s case be adjourned until July 2 while they request disclosure from the Crown in the case.
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