ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

I first met Chris Sheriffe the day after Thanksgiving in 2023. He’d written me. Convicted of first-degree murder in 2012, he said there was “false” DNA at his trial and the judge controversially allowed damaging “hearsay” evidence by a police officer that labelled him a gang member.Ìý

Before seeing him in person, I read the transcripts of the trial, got the court to release the police exhibits to me, and spoke to his parents, Marjorie and Lloyd Sheriffe. “He’s a good boy and was never in a gang,” says Marjorie. She and Lloyd have spent a lot of money on legal fees, trying to prove Chris’s innocence. “If he was guilty, then he would have to pay. He would have to be responsible for what he did. But I know he’s innocent.”

Then I drove down the 401 to see their son behind bars.

There is a big commotion when I enter the visiting room. Guards poking through a pile of bags. A German shepherd search dog barking when it smelled drugs in one of the bags. “He hit for crystal meth,” a guard explains. The prison had “trailers” on the weekendÌý— conjugal visits for inmates in portables I could see through barred windows. One guy tried to smuggle drugs back to his cell. His privileges were revoked.

I tell the guard I’m here to see Chris Sheriffe.Ìý

“Want me to bring him up?” the guard asks. Other than the cleanup crew, the room is empty. Dozens of cafeteria-style steel tables bolted to the floor fill it, each with four stools jutting out from a thick central post.

I walk around. The floor is covered with purple and brown carpet squares. There’s a stack of DVDs and a television at one end. At the other, kids’ stuff, some toys and one of those hard plastic playhouses, for family visits.

A door clangs open and a tall Black man in a white long-sleeved sweatshirt walks over.

“Hi, I’m Chris.” We shake hands. His grip is firm, his eyes meet mine. Words tumble out. It’s hard to keep up. I ask if he can slow down.

“That’s what my Toastmasters coach tells me,” Chris says, the barest smile on his broad face.

I’m sitting across from a man the justice system says was the getaway driver in the killing of Kim Golaub. Chris has a stack of papers with him, 30 educational certificates he has completed in prison. He has passed three “Competent Communicator” levels and is working on one more. I’m here to talk about the murder. Instead, we’re talking public speaking. He says the prison Toastmasters group includes 15 men, all convicted of serious crimes. He’s got his next speech figured out.Ìý

“Being a leader, the leader versus the boss. So I’m just figuring out like, what would you rather be like?” he says. “A boss is basically someone who’s in sort of a spot of authority rather than the leader who will motivate you.” In prison, he’s got a job as a liaison between inmates and guards.Ìý

“If I see a guard and an inmate arguing, I’ll kind of intervene. I’ll try to talk to the inmate to calm them down and maybe I can hopefully get him at a lower level than the guards could.”Ìý

Using his carpentry training, he’s also got a prison job building field trailers for the Canadian Armed Forces. The stipend he gets from both jobs allows him to buy food from the prison commissary, which he cooks in a shared microwave near his cell. “I don’t love the prison food.”

When Chris was 10, a stringy, small 10, he was scouted for a rep soccer team in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½. He was speedy, scored a lot of goals. Went on to play for Canada in overseas tournaments. His nickname was “Hits,” because of how hard he hit the ball. It’s a nickname that would later be used against him in court.

The coach who would eventually send him to live and play in England during his mid-teen years can’t say enough good things about him, despite the murder conviction. He still lists Chris as one of his “brags” on the website of Global Satellite Soccer Academy.

“Chris fashioned himself on our finest models,” says Jeff Hackett, head coach at Global, which scouts players for international clubs. “He developed a strong work ethic on the pitch, and his mental approach to the game was solid. Off the field, Chris was respectable, polite, shy and kind-hearted.”Ìý

Coaches could see him having a pro career. But a couple of things happened. First, he was so quietÌý— shy evenÌý— that he didn’t communicate enough with fellow players on the pitch.Ìý

“Because he just comes in, he trains, he doesn’t speak to anybody,” was the feedback Hackett got from the English coaches. “In football, communication is huge. So that’s how he got to come back to Canada.”

Soccer still might have worked out, but Chris had injuries, two of them. An elbow to the orbital bone in his eyeÌý— it affected his eyesight but he played through that one. Then a devastating knee injury. But he had a backup plan: builder.Ìý“I got my carpentry apprenticeship at Local 27, I did scaffolding, concrete forming and welding. And framing at the same time.”

He had a union job lined up for September 2009. A few weeks before, on Aug. 16, 2009, he was arrested for the Kim Golaub murder.

Coming into a prison with 760 inmates, Chris was terrified. He learned the best way to survive was to get involved in prison life, taking courses, joining the inmate committees and working behind bars.

I tell Chris it’s time to talk about the murder, to get his version of what happened that weekend in 2009, when Kim Golaub was gunned down. He tells me the same story he’s been telling since 2009.

On the Saturday (the day before the shooting) Chris went to two barbecues near where he lives, a part of Rexdale, in the northwest corner of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½. It was a hot weekendÌý— everyone was outside. As he often did, he had his parents’ four-door Mazda, and some of the people from the second barbecue asked for a lift to Juicy Jerks, a dance club andÌýrestaurant. He ended up driving two young women who were home from college for the summer, and an older guy he vaguely knewÌý— Awet Asfaha. Later at the restaurant, people were talking about getting hotel rooms and continuing the party. They needed a ride.Ìý

“I asked them, could I come too?” Chris recalls. A bunch of them ended up in two rooms at the Travelodge near Pearson airport. They stayed up late, fell asleep watching TV. The next day, Chris says he drove them home, dropping the two young women first at their apartment. He said he was driving Awet home when he asked Chris to pull over so he could run an errand. Chris said Awet came back a few minutes later, and they drove off. Later that night, police arrested them both.

Chris said the takedown was shocking.

“It was scary because, again, this is my first time ever being arrested like that, being charged and being in an interview and being interrogated, like I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know anything. I was oblivious.”

Though Chris had never been arrested before, he had been “carded” numerous times. It was those cards on file with ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ police that helped them link the Mazda to Chris. Carding is the (now defunct) practice the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ police had of randomly stopping young menÌý— disproportionately young Black menÌý— and asking them what they were doing, taking down their name, address and description.

Chris was carded at least nine times; sometimes he was in his soccer kit or his school uniform. One time police chased him into a school and only left when the principal intervened. In that case, Chris had made a formal complaint to the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ police. They said there was nothing to his complaint. He appealed (he was 18, he and his mother filled out the paperwork) and the oversight body rejected his appeal because he had missed the deadline by a couple of days.Ìý

“This is kind of how the justice system treats you when you are Black,” Chris says.

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Through the prison window I can see the sun hanging low in the sky. I ask him if I’m going to find any evidence that he and Awet left that hotel room with a plan to kill someone. Or will I find text messages that reveal a murder plot? Evidence that you and Awet bought a gun? Chris says no, nothing.Ìý

“I wanted to drop off the girls, drop them home and whatever, and go out and go on my own way. And I said there was no plan in the world, no nothing. There was no him saying, Oh, hold on, go shoot this person right here, and then we’ll come back to your car. There was no plan like that.”

I ask him one more question. Are you a killer?

“Never was. Never have. Never will be.”

He says that early in the case he was given an opportunity to plead guilty to a lesser charge, which would have meant serving only a few years in jail. Lawyers have told him that if he were now to say he was involved in the shooting in some way, it might help him in an application for early release, called a “faint hope” appeal. His answer has been the same for all these years.

“I’m not going to take accountability for something that I didn’t do,Ìýeven if it’s to get out of jail tomorrow.”