Woman pleads guilty to helping her boyfriend kill roommate

A Calgary woman on Friday pleaded guilty to helping her boyfriend kill their roommate when a dispute over a $450 drug debt turned violent.

Mahmoud Ahmed Aburashed died of asphyxia in a home on 28th Avenue N.E. on Dec. 13, 2019, following a fight with Allen James Mccabe and Megan Elizabeth Springstead.

Last Tuesday, Mccabe, 34, who was initially charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case centring on a dispute over money drug dealer Aburashed said was owed him.

In an agreed statement of facts in which Springstead pleaded guilty to manslaughter, the woman admitted to helping Mccabe tape the victim's arms and legs after he'd been assaulted by her boyfriend.

“Her unlawful acts of assisting Mccabe in subduing, seizing and confining (Aburashed) were objectively dangerous,” said Crown prosecutor Doug Taylor, in reading the agreed statement.

Minutes later, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Willie dewit then convicted Springstead of manslaughter as she looked on from the prisoner's box.

In the statement of facts, primary renter Aburashed, 58, had confronted the pair about the unpaid debt and told them they had to move out of the residence.

It also stated Mccabe told police Aburashed had struck him in the head with a crowbar, but that he was then able to grab the weapon and turn it on his assailant.

The pair had told friends they fled after assaulting their roommate and were afraid Aburashed's associates were on their way to the home to confront them.

But Mccabe exhibited no wounds in subsequent photographs and “no other witnesses mentioned any injuries that they noticed on either Mccabe or Springstead,” said Taylor.

Court heard an autopsy found Aburashed had been struck by a blunt instrument on his head, face and arm and that he died from pressure applied to his neck that fractured the hyoid bone and damaged muscles.

“(Aburashed was) manually strangled with compression of the neck by way of hands or an object (such as a crowbar),” said Taylor.

When the dead man's former roommate returned to the home to retrieve personal items two days after the murder, he found Aburashed's bloodied body, lying face down with his hands bound, in a bedroom.

Springstead and Mccabe had fled to B.C. in a newly purchased car but were arrested Dec. 27, 2019, after they'd returned to Calgary.

A date for Springstead's sentencing hearing is to be set in early 2022, while sentencing for Mccabe is scheduled to begin Jan. 17.