MANCHESTER, NH – Jury selection is set to start Monday, May 9, 2022, in the case of a man accused of attempted murder in last year’s daylight shooting of a former employee outside USA Chicken and Biscuit on Elm Street.
Zabayullah Qahir, 30, of 1011 Meadow Lane, Dunbarton, but now detained in the Valley Street jail, also was indicted by a Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District grand jury on three counts of first-degree assault.
In a twist, the alleged victim, Sean Brown, 48, of Manchester, who police said was shot three times, has agreed to testify on behalf of the shooter, because he says he egged on Qahir to shoot him.
The case is an intriguing one with the prosecutor giving Brown immunity from potential simple assault and criminal threatening charges in connection with the shooting.
At the same time, however, Assistant County Attorney Thomas J. Craig, at a hearing Friday before Judge David Anderson, said if Brown takes the state he intends to try and impeach him on his testimony, saying what he told the defense and what was published in the New Hampshire Union Leader differ.
Attorney Brian T. Lee, who represents Brown, said the grant of immunity would prevent his client from invoking his Fifth Amendment right concerning that and other issues.
Craig said he also intends to question him concerning an extortion claim.
Defense attorney Wade Harwood said early in the case the defense informed the prosecution that a third party had contacted Qahir on behalf of Brown to ask for money if Brown testified.
“I don’t think the state took any steps to investigate it,” Harwood said.
At that same hearing, Harwood told the judge his client is considering a plea offer of 6 to 20 years in prison.
Brown also is being held in the jail on charges related to a drug enterprise although he and Qahir are held in different quarters. Brown in April reached out to the Union Leader to say that he had egged on Qahir to shoot him and that he was willing to testify on his behalf at his trial.
“I baited him like a Louisiana catfish,” Brown told the newspaper.
The shooting took place at 6:15 p.m. on May 10, 2021, outside the downtown restaurant.
On April 27, 2022, Thomas Nickels of Nickels Investigations interviewed Brown at the jail. His report to defense attorney Mark Sisti was filed with the court.
In that interview, Brown said he worked for USA Chicken and Biscuit for one week. He reported to Zabayullah, whom he called “Kasim,” and said he took the job for cigarette money and as a favor to Kasim. Qahir was the manager of the restaurant owned by his father.
After Brown was fired, he wanted to collect his check. Brown sent Qahir a text saying he would be by to pick up his check and saying he “did not understand why he had contracted STDs once again,” a statement which was off subject.
After the text, Qahir blocked Brown’s text messages.
When he arrived at the restaurant, he tried to text Qahir to let him know he was waiting outside. After Qahir did not come out, and not knowing then that his text messages were blocked, Brown went into the restaurant and said he wanted him to come out and give him his last check.
When Qahir came outside, Brown said he started to insult him by saying that the Arabs were the ones that enslaved the Blacks and they were the reason that slavery was predominant in the United States – that it was not White people. The conversation escalated, with Brown calling Qahir a “pussy,” and told him he was nothing more than a wimp.
By then, several people were surrounding them on the sidewalk and they were laughing at Qahir, Brown told Nickels. Brown said he continued to taunt Qahir, telling him he was a “wannabe Black,” and he wasn’t familiar with the hip hop movement. Brown told the investigator he had tried to provoke a confrontation. He said he wanted to “fuck with his head” in continuing to insult Qahir.
He said women in the crowd began laughing at Qahir and that he took steps towards Qahir in a “threatening way.” Qahir told him to “wait there.” Brown said he thought Qahir was going to get his check and he was excited because he thought he had pushed Qahir’s buttons.
“I provoked Kasim and he had lost it,” Brown told the investigator.
When Qahir came out of the restaurant, he had a handgun. “Go ahead and shoot, be a man, shoot,” Brown said he told Qahir who he described as having a look of total anger in his eyes.
Qahir fired the gun. Brown said he didn’t feel the first shot, it felt like a push, he said, and he wasn’t sure he’d been shot. Brown said he started to take steps toward Qahir again, which Brown said probably made Qahir feel threatened and Qahir shot him a second time. Brown fell to the ground and, he said, once again he called Qahir a “pussy.” Qahir raised the gun and fired a third time.
At that point, bystanders intervened. Brown said he was still conscious and Qahir made a comment that he was authorized to use the gun. Brown said Qahir, who he believed wouldn’t shoot the gun because he was a wimp, proved him wrong.
At the end of the interview, Brown said he did not like Arabs and he did not like the police.
On May 3, 2022, Sisti met with Brown and asked him to review the statements he made to the investigator. Brown said there was one important omission.
He said he told the investigator he threatened Qahir by placing his hand in his pocket and acting as if he had a firearm as he walked toward Qahir in an intimidating manner. Brown believed that was why Qahir shot him.
Brown gave a different account to the newspaper. He said Qahir fired a shot after Brown “banished him from hip-hop.” He described Qahir as someone who tried to appropriate the hip-hoop culture of urban Black, but could not live up to it.
According to court records, the shooting was witnessed by several people, two of whom told Qahir to stop after he retrieved a gun from inside the restaurant and headed back outside with it.
“Get out of my way,” Qahir told Ahmad Hakefi, 30, who was working for Doordash at the time and had told Qahir to stop. Hakefi told police he then saw Qahir shoot Brown three times.
Donald Vandenberghe, 63, was sitting in the outside seating area at Castro’s Back Room, 972 Elm St., when he saw two men, one he described as short and stocky and the other, tall, thin and bald, arguing outside the restaurant. During the argument, he said he heard the shorter, stockier man, who he described as possibly being of Middle-Eastern descent, use racial slurs in addressing the other man, who he said was Black.
Vandenberghe said the argument lasted a couple of minutes when the shorter man went back into the restaurant. The tall man put down his bag and was gesturing at the other man. However, Vandenberghe said he did not make any attempt to follow the other man into the store. Vandenberghe said at this point it was a “passive fight.”
The stockier man then came out of the restaurant and, without saying a word, shot the other man. Vandenberghe took a quick photo of the man holding the gun after the incident, according to investigators.
Jennifer Ruathi, 35, was waiting in her car with her children directly in front of the restaurant while her husband was inside getting food. She, too, saw the two men arguing. When the argument ended, she said the tall man picked up his belongings and took one to two steps away from the restaurant.
She told police that all of a sudden the other man emerged from the restaurant with a “small black gun” and immediately opened fire, shooting the other man three times. The shooter then tucked the gun into his waistband.
Joachim Maruchu, 33, Ruathi’s husband, was inside the restaurant at the time of the shooting. He saw the two men arguing in the doorway and told police Qahir shoved Brown out the door. At that point, Maruchu said, Brown yelled for the other man to come out and fight him, but he did not reenter USA Chicken and Biscuit.
He heard Qahir tell Brown to “wait right there.”
Qahir then ran toward the restaurant kitchen and pulled out a black handgun. Maruchu said he and another person in the store told him to stop but they did not intervene any further because Qahir appeared extremely mad and Maruchu was nervous about what might happen if he tried to stop him.
Qahir then stepped outside the restaurant and, without saying a word shot Brown, according to court records.
Officer Jack Wagoner, in his affidavit, said witness statements preclude an establishment of a self-defense claim for Qahir. Brown never followed Qahir back into the restaurant once the argument was over and Qahir was the one who returned and immediately shot him, Wagoner wrote.
