Rapper's young killer 'wanted to become a gangster'
Three months after rapper Christopher Habiyakare was shot dead during a home invasion, his killer was planning to acquire a gun for another armed burglary.
This was despite police and his victim's family issuing public pleas for help to catch the 24-year-old's killer.
"He wanted to become a gangster," Justice Christopher Beale said of the gunman.
Mustafa Alhassan pleaded guilty to homicide by firearm and handling stolen goods and faced a pre-sentence hearing in Victoria's Supreme Court on Wednesday supported by his mother, father, aunt and two brothers.
The 21-year-old, who went by the nickname "G-Loud", faces up to 25 years in prison and has been in custody since his arrest in March 2022.
Alhassan was masked when he and two other men armed themselves with a .22 calibre rifle, a machete and a Taser and went to Mr Habiyakare's Sunshine North home to steal money.
Word had spread that Mr Habiyakare had $1 million, the court was told.
Mr Habiyakare, who performed under the name Lyr1cure7, had friends at his home when they heard a knock on the door on the evening of August 24, 2021.
He walked to the door as Alhassan and the co-offenders forced their way inside, prosecutor Raymond Gibson said.
There was a struggle and Mr Habiyakare was pushed through the hallway and into the living room, as Alhassan was holding the rifle, he said.
"Woah, woah, you're going to shoot me?" Mr Habiyakare said.
Alhassan pointed the gun in Mr Habiyakare's direction and fired one shot which went into his chest, before fleeing in a red Holden Astra and later disposing of the numberplates, Mr Gibson said.
Mr Habiyakare fell to the ground, got up briefly and collapsed again.
His friend, August Niranyibagir, tried to perform CPR before paramedics arrived and pronounced him dead at the scene.
"We used to make music, I would make the beats and he would rap over them," he said, in a statement read to court on Wednesday.
"Now my last memory of him is me performing CPR ... my life and all the others will never be the same."
Mr Habiyakare's father Belthrand said the family had used their savings and personal loans to build a centre in their home of Burundi, in East Africa, which was named after his son.
"I feel incomplete, weak and incompetent as a father because I'm constantly reminded I should've protected my son at all costs," he said, in a statement read to court.
Alhassan was due to face trial in 2024, with several days of pre-trial arguments heard, but he pleaded guilty in October.
In November 2021, about three months after the killing, Alhassan agreed to help source a gun for one of his co-accused and keep watch in another home invasion, the court was told.
But his co-accused was arrested before the Maribyrnong burglary took place.
"He's fully aware that he has shot and killed someone, he nonetheless agrees to participate in some way in relation to a further home invasion," Justice Beale said.
"With all of that, how am I going to find that he's genuinely remorseful?"
Alhassan's barrister Karen Argiropoulos SC conceded his willingness to be involved in further criminal activity was not consistent with remorse.
She said her client accepted the offending was serious and, while he said the shooting occurred "spontaneously", he understood he was facing years in prison for it.
"They planned to do this home invasion but he didn't intend to kill," she said.
Justice Beale will sentence Alhassan at a later date.
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