In Calgary courts: Bail hearing set for suspect in deadly home invasion robbery in northwest Calgary 13 months ago​on February 12, 2025 at 11:08 pm

Calgary investment banker and admitted money launderer Talal Fouani told a jury Tuesday he still doesn’t know who is responsible for a deadly ambush outside his home where his wife was fatally shot.

And 2½ years after the attack, in which he suffered a gunshot wound to the face that required multiple surgeries, Fouani remains frightened for his safety.

“I still don’t know who’s behind all of this,” Fouani said, while testifying in the trial of the Edmonton-area man who has admitted being the shooter.

“I’m scared of my own shadow.”

Michael Tyrel Arnold is charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the Aug. 18, 2022, double-shooting outside the southwest Calgary home of Fouani and his wife, Nakita Baron.

Baron, 31, was shot once in the chest after Fouani was shot in the face as Arnold, dressed in a construction vest and walking a white dog on a leash, approached the witness’s Bentley as it backed out of his driveway and opened fire.

When Arnold was arraigned on Monday defence counsel Kathryn Quinlan offered a guilty plea to manslaughter, but Crown prosecutor Hyatt Mograbee said she would be proceeding to call evidence in the murder case.

A statement of agreed facts made an exhibit in the case says Arnold admits being the shooter captured in graphic footage from a neighbour’s security camera and shown Monday to jurors.

Fouani told Mograbee he had never seen the gunman before and didn’t know him.

He admitted facing a charge of money laundering, which he has pleaded guilty to but has yet to be sentenced, which was laid by police in June 2022.

Fouani said he couldn’t discuss details of his money laundering charge and said he intends to file an application to have it dismissed.

“I can’t talk about it because it’s still an ongoing investigation,” he said.

As for the attack on himself and his wife, Fouani said he was going to work that morning and asked Baron to join him so they could go to the Saskatoon Berry Farm afterwards.

He said he was sitting in his car for several minutes waiting for Baron to come out. When she did he backed out of the driveway onto their street.

At the same time an individual wearing a construction vest approached, leading him to believe he was involved in the installation of Telus fibre lines in the area.

“A gentleman came up (past) the front end of the car and gestured for me to put my window down. I thought it was the Telus construction guys,” he said.

“And then everything went blank,” Fouani said.

“I felt like time just stopped. Everything was in slow motion.”

Under cross-examination he told Quinlan he was leaving for work at 8 a.m., much later than he usually did, and could have waited in his car up to 10 minutes before Baron came out.