Defence challenges reliability of vehicle, cellphone tracking data at Montreal teen’s murder trial

The trial for the two men charged with first degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Meriem Boundaoui entered its fourth week on Tuesday.

Boundaoui died after being shot in the head in Montreal’s Saint-Leonard borough nearly five years ago.

LATEST: Trial begins for men accused of murdering Montreal teen Meriem Boundaoui in 2021

Following the incident, Salim Touaibi and Aymane Bouadi, who were both in their mid-20s at the time of the shooting, were charged with first-degree murder and four other counts of attempted murder.

On Tuesday morning, two witnesses testified about data extracted from a white Mercedes the Crown alleges was used when the shooting occurred.

The Crown asked Patrick Boudreau, an investigator with the Sûreté du Québec, to clarify different time stamps extracted from the car. The defence followed by questioning the investigator about the system possibly producing erroneous data on its hard drive.

The Crown then presented a technician for Cellutrak, a company that provided a GPS tracking system on the white Mercedes, who explained the location of the car would have been produced every two minutes whenever possible. The defence then questioned the reliability of this tracking data.

“There are many questions that can be raised, and for me, have to be raised to make sure that that evidence can be considered and considered at what level in that necessity of proving without a reasonable doubt that it happened,” said Nada Boumeftah, a Montreal youth protection and criminal lawyer.

“In this particular case, we know that it’s a question of positioning, who was there, who did what. It’s a case of murder that we have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, without a doubt that the crime was committed by those people.”

An employee from Rogers Communications also testified about text messages from one of their accounts’ phone numbers and how accurate it is to predict the location of a cellphone.

“Cellular data is used in many criminal trials, and can be challenged in many levels,” Boumeftah said. “It will depend on what information are we trying to bring up in front of the court by the cellular data. Is it a question of localization? Is it a question of who transmitted, or what was transmitted as information?”

On Feb. 7, 2021, Boundaoui was inside a stopped car with another person when another vehicle pulled up and a suspect or suspects opened fire on them. The Crown has said that Meriem was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Crown prosecutors also said the shooting was part of a parking dispute between two businesses.

Boumeftah says the crime raises a series of questions.

“First, how did they got a hand on a gun?” she asked. “How did that firearm came in our streets? And how people came to the thought that they could make justice?

“I consider it as not only a tragedy, but a problematic that it happened in a society where someone was shot.”

The trial is expected to last 10 to 12 weeks.