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A Windsor killer’s appeal of his murder conviction in the vicious fatal beating of a randomly encountered senior on the Ganatchio Trail five years ago has been tossed out by the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
And the panel of three justices from the higher court also dismissed Habibullah ‘Danny’ Ahmadi’s appeal for leniency in his punishment.
Convicted of second-degree murder in the Oct. 8, 2017, killing of Sara Anne Widholm, 76 when she died, following a trial in Windsor, Ahmadi was handed an automatic life sentence by Superior Court of Justice Bruce Thomas in 2021.
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“It is difficult to imagine a more despicable and cowardly attack than the one absorbed by Sara Anne Widholm on the Ganatchio Trail,” Thomas said at the sentencing. The judge imposed a 13-year period of parole ineligibility — more than the 10-year minimum the defence had sought, but less than the 14 to 17 years the Crown was seeking.
Lawyers for Ahmadi appealed the conviction to the higher court, arguing last May the Windsor judge had not properly taken into consideration the accused killer’s state of mind at the time of his random encounter with Widholm — he had previously consumed magic mushrooms — as well as how the judge had used “out-of-court statements” made to police by the accused following his same-day arrest. The defence never disputed that Ahmadi attacked the senior and was the cause of her death.
The appeal court justices, in their 30-page written decision released Friday, agreed with the trial judge that Ahmadi, although “intoxicated” by the mushrooms, still had “the requisite state of mind for murder.”
While granting leave to also appeal the sentence, the appeals court dismissed that as well. Ahmadi’s lawyers sought a three-year reduction in the parole ineligibility period — to 10 years from 13 — arguing the trial judge ‘erred’ in treating as an aggravating factor Ahmadi’s “self-serving attempts to … divert responsibility” in his initial statements to police.
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What the Court of Appeal decision means is that Ahmadi, 21 years old at the time but now 28, has more than five years remaining before he can first apply for parole, and even at that point, an early release is not guaranteed.
The Court of Appeal described how Ahmadi “viciously and inexplicably assaulted” Widholm with fists and elbows. The mother of three adult children, who was on her regular morning walk, picking up litter along the way, was so grievously injured that she fell into a coma and died 14 months later in hospital. Her husband of 54 years died a month after the attack.
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The randomness and brutality of the deadly assault on a vulnerable senior, 75 at the time, added to the shock felt by the community. There were community gatherings, organized events like litter pickups to honour Widholm, and a tree was planted and a bench and plaque erected in her memory along the popular recreational trail.
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