Would-be Toronto hitman jailed six years after failed hit on B.C. man​on March 25, 2025 at 12:37 am

A Toronto man has been jailed for six years in B.C. after pleading guilty to conspiring to kill a Surrey man, according to a B.C. Supreme Court judgment.

The ruling revealed details of how Metro residents who wanted Harkirat Jhutty dead in April 2023 took care of the Toronto man’s accommodation, provided stolen vehicles and showed him photos of the target and his car. They also provided Jhutty’s address and real-time updates on his location, according to the sentencing judgment for Nathan Rashawn Johnson-Audain released on Monday.

According to an statement of facts provided jointly by the prosecution and defence, Johnson-Audain, then 20, used the alias Road on the encryted Signal communications app, where he was given instructions on where to park to carry out the murder and how to make his getaway.

His co-conspirators, using the aliases Nlits, WICK and stamprr, also encouraged the would-be assassin, imploring him to not to hesitate in shooting Jhutty and to not get distracted, Justice Martha Devlin wrote in her decision.

Johnson-Audain followed the instructions but encountered difficulties, she said. He drove by Jhutty’s house several times without spotting him and another time he crashed his stolen vehicle into a parked car that he thought Jhutty was driving, only to realize the driver was a woman, Jasmine Bhatti, the fiancée of Jhutty’s cousin, she wrote.

The crash totalled Bhatti’s car and she suffered a concussion, a nosebleed and bruising to her face, according to the judgment.

The judgment included no information about any further arrests.

On April 21, 2023, about a week after Johnson-Audain arrived in B.C., Jasminder Jhutty, Harkirat’s brother, reported to police that a 2012 silver Ford Fusion had driven past the Jhutty house in Surrey, according to the judgment.

The next day, Harkirat Jhutty found a tracking device on his vehicle, and police began watching the Fusion, resulting in the arrest two days later of Johnson-Audain, it said.

In the car, police found a loaded Glock 34 handgun with a defaced serial number and a 31-round magazine. In one of the rental homes where he stayed, police found an Ontario driver’s licence bearing Johnson-Audain’s photo but the name Calvin Wilson.

Johnson-Audain, now 22, has been in custody since his arrest.

The court had an assessment of Johnson-Audain, who is Black, done last year to consider the impact of race and culture on his actions.

It said he was raised with three siblings primarily by his mother in conditions of poverty, according to the judgment. Both parents were born in the Caribbean, his early family life was unstable, he was physically abused by his father, emotionally abused by his mother, and he witnessed his parents fighting, including physically.