‘Every day is a struggle,’ dad says

Son died of one gunshot to the chest

An Ontario Superior Court Justice has sentenced Zeeshan Feroze Hafeez to 15 years in prison on a manslaughter charge for the shooting of a 24-year-old victim once in the chest at a Niagara Falls hotel in a drug-dealing dispute.

Superior Court Justice Paul Sweeny accepted a guilty plea from Hafeez, a Scarborough resident, in a Welland courtroom Friday for the shooting death of Derek Khelawan.

The plea deal and a joint sentencing agreement were the result of negotiations between Crown attorney Robert Mahler and Hafeez’s lawyer, Mitch Engel, of Brampton.

“No sentence can fill the hole in the heart of the victim’s family,” Sweeny told the court on sentencing.

Hafeez, 23, admitted to shooting and killing Khelawan with a single bullet to the chest in Room 105 at the Glengate Hotel on Stanley Avenue in Niagara Falls in March 2020, Mahler said as part of an agreed statement of fact.

Alexia Joseph, 20, of Scarborough, who was represented by Toronto defence attorney Brittany Sherwood, pleaded guilty to accessory to manslaughter. Sweeny sentenced Joseph to 33 months in custody plus one day. Both Joseph and Hafeez received reduced sentences for pretrial custody. Neither had a criminal record.

Before sentencing, Mahler read victim impact statements from Khelawan’s family including one by Anirude Khelawan, the victim’s father.

In the statement, Anirude Khelawan said his son was soft-spoken and gentle, academically brilliant and a qualified lifeguard.

“No one knows the loss of a child unless they experience it themselves,” Khelawan said. “Since Derek was taken from us, I exist, but I don’t. Every day is a struggle to find purpose and peace.

“Every day, we still listen for the door to open in the hope that he comes home. We thought of selling our home and moving away, but

this was the only home he knew. So we remain here still in his imaginary presence.”

Khelawan, a graduate of an elite private high school in Toronto, and Hafeez, a highschool dropout, were dealing drugs out of the hotel Glengate hotel room until customers began complaining to Hafeez that Khelawan was “shorting” them (not giving them the amount of drugs for which they had paid).

Surveillance video of the activities at the hotel provided police investigators with much of the evidence in the case.

The hotel video showed that on March 25, not long after 10 p.m., Khelawan went back into the Room 105 and was never seen again.

According to the agreed statement of facts, in the early morning hours of March 26, Hafeez and Khelawan engaged in a heated argument over the accusation Khelawan was shorting customers. When Khelawan moved toward Joseph as if he might accost her, Hafeez shot him.

On March 27, the hotel video captured Lequan Matthews, 23, of Scarborough, arriving at the hotel in a limousine.

Hafeez and Matthews were later shown on video leaving Room 105 and pushing a luggage trolley — with Khelawan’s body encased in dark plastic — through the front desk area and into the parking lot. They then drove away in Khelawan’s vehicle. Khelawan’s body was found on March 29 by hunters in a rural area south of the Niagara Falls.

Matthews has already been sentenced to 33 months plus one day for accessory after the fact.