Police have named a prime suspect in the brazen weekend killing of one of the original members of the city’s most notorious street gang.



Mustafa Ahmed, 28, is wanted for second-degree murder in the shooting of 33-year-old Omar Rashid-Ghader, who was shot multiple times inside a ByWard Market nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning.



Ahmed, who police said is considered armed and dangerous, is a known associate of the victim.



Rashid-Ghader was at the Sentral Night Club, where Brooklyn hip-hop artist Maino was scheduled to perform.



Around 3:20 a.m. Sunday, someone shot Rashid-Ghader multiple times, sending patrons in the club scattering. One of them found a police patrol officer nearby outside. Police tried to resuscitate the victim before paramedics arrived and requested a defibrillator but he was pronounced dead at the scene, said Duty Insp. Sean McDade.



It was the only deadly incident in a spate of four shootings around the city Sunday.



An original member of the south-end Ledbury-Banff Crips, Rashid-Ghader was well-known to police. Known as “Esco” – short for “Escobar” – Rashid-Ghader had multiple run-ins with the law, dating back at least to 2003.



He was also an aspiring rapper and hip hop star, with several videos posted on YouTube over the years.



He leaves behind a wife and young children.



The man named as a suspect by police has also been arrested before. He was charged alongside Mohamed Farouk Ahmed and Adil Omer, also known as AP, after a dramatic takedown in Gatineau during an investigation into the 2009 gangland homicide of 19-year-old Daniel Valladares. Valladares was shot dead outside Cabaret Le Pink strip club in Gatineau. At the time of his death, he was an LBC associate.



Mustafa Ahmed pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking offences laid against him at the time.



In 2008, the year before the strip club killing, Ahmed was charged in a Calgary police drug bust that targeted former Ottawa street gang members who had gone west looking to capitalize on a booming Alberta.



The weekend shooting in the Market left friends of the victim reeling. One longtime friend said Sunday she had been out at the club as well, but had left early to get home to her kids.



Before she went, Muna said, she had wanted to have one last word with Rashid-Ghader, but couldn’t catch his attention, so left without saying goodbye.



A short time later, he was dead.



“This is so unfair. I’m still registering,” she said Sunday morning. “I still can’t believe it.



“They need to put guns in control — they need to do something.”

Several of Rashid-Ghader’s friends, who had received word he had been shot during the night and rushed to hospitals and then to the police station for news, were visibly upset in the street outside of the club on Sunday morning.

"He's a good person, he's funny," Muna said.

Dalhousie Street was blocked off through much of Sunday, as forensic investigators processed “the complicated scene.”

A man who said he works at Sentral but who did not want to be identified said the club’s policy is to pat down all guests when they enter as security measure. There is no metal detector.

The employee also said the club has a lot of cameras that likely would have captured the incident.

Police are still investigating.

Basil Radwan, 24, was waiting to go to work near the crime scene Sunday morning. He said he doesn’t really come downtown anymore because of the increase in violence.

“Every day it’s getting worse,” he said, adding that people are bringing violence from their neighbourhoods to the core.

But many local business owners insisted the shooting does not reflect the safety in the Market as a whole.

This is the city’s 11th homicide of the year.

Victim's past run-ins with the law

The victim in Sunday morning’s shooting had numerous run-ins with the law.

In September 2003, Rashid-Ghader was one of eight people charged after a knife fight in the area of Ledbury Avenue and Banff Street, the place that would give rise to the street gang.

Then, in June 2004, as police revved up efforts to take down the increasingly violent gang, Rashid-Ghader, then just 20, was charged with conspiracy to traffic cocaine and breach of recognizance.

He faced more criminal charges in November of that year after gang members stormed into a south-side eatery. They were officially using the spot as their headquarters, despite not being welcome. Rashid-Ghader was arrested alongside four other members who police alleged smashed the front windows of the bar with stones and assaulted customers and staff over two different nights. Rashid-Ghader was charged with aggravated assault, assault, intimidation, mischief over $5,000, causing a disturbance and various weapons charges.

In January 2009, Rashid-Ghader was arrested in the west end after police searched a rental car he was driving and found rocks of crack cocaine both inside the car and on him and $540. He was later searched at the police station where police found another $300 and 6.5 grams of crack. He was charged with cocaine trafficking.

A judge ruled in 2010 that the police search was warrantless and found that, even though Rashid-Ghader made several “unbelievable” statements, the officers’ accounts were also inconsistent and tossed out the drug evidence against Rashid-Ghader. He testified himself that he was a drug dealer but that the drugs weren’t in plain view when police began searching him and the rental car. He told court that he had hidden the crack between his butt cheeks, but had some in his pocket for the $60 deal he was expecting to make. Back then, worried about being ripped off by other dealers, Rashid-Ghader didn’t pull the drugs out until he had the cash in his hands.

Today, members of the Ledbury-Banff Crips no longer unite under that name.