Eaton Centre shooting: Jury hears from dead witness

An eyewitness to the Eaton Centre shooting, who is now dead, had his version of events related to a jury on Tuesday as the murder trial of gunman Christopher Husbands continued in Toronto. 

Nisan Nirmalendran, the younger brother of one of the victims, gave a statement to police about what he saw during the June 2012 shooting. 

"Once I heard one the gunshot, everyone got up, like everyone got up, everyone started running like jumping up on tables like everyone, like, like I ran for myself," Nirmalendran said, while in the back of a police car, about a month after the shooting. 

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He told police officers that about 20 minutes after he fled the Eaton Centre he recognized his older brother Nixon on a stretcher on TV.

"I was like, like I was so shocked because didn't realize my brother got shot and I thought my brother got away," he said. 

Nixon Nirmalendran, 22, died several days after the shooting. His friend Ahmed Hassan, 24, collapsed and died at the scene. 

Nisan Nirmalendran was killed months after the Eaton Centre shooting. The investigation into his death is ongoing. 

Ashley Stanger, a friend and former work colleague of Husbands, told the court more than a month before the shootings, Husbands told her he'd been attacked and stabbed by a group of men. 

"He said it wasn't fair how he got hurt and how he was upset about it and he wanted to get even with whoever did that to him," Stranger said. 

Husbands has admitted he killed Hassan and Nixon Nirmalendran but says it was not pre-meditated. He faces charges including two counts of first-degree murder, to which he pleaded not guilty.