The girlfriend of a man killed over the weekend claims his death was a result of mistaken identity.
“He was walking out, and there was a group of angry people outside waiting for someone else,” Amina Khiat said yesterday from her home in Windsor, Ont. “He tried to stop a fight — they thought he was someone else. Apparently, these guys were just furious.”
Brendan McNaughton’s body was discovered outside the Nu Wave Pub on 182 Street and 89 Avenue early Saturday morning, dead of an apparent stab wound, police said.
Khiat received details of McNaughton’s death from his closest friends, she said, though her intuition screamed he was in danger around the time his body was found.
“I knew something happened to him,” she said, after he didn’t respond to six text messages. “It just wasn’t like him — I could feel something was wrong with him.”
Khiat, 19, met and fell in love with McNaughton, 21, while on vacation in Edmonton over Christmas. She was planning to return on March 16, before moving to Alberta permanently this summer.
Jayden Jeffery Zylinski, 19, was charged with second-degree murder in connection with the incident.
