Botched hunt for $1m bounty lands killer behind bars
By William Ton
Rumours of a $1 million bounty inside the home of rapper Chris Habiyakare and a fight breaking out days earlier offered intruders a smokescreen to carry out a home invasion.
Masked and armed with a .22-calibre rifle, machete and Taser, Mustafa Alhassan and two others were lured by a belief Habiyakare was keeping a huge pile of money in his suburban Melbourne home at Sunshine North.
Mustafa Alhassan leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria on Thursday.Credit: AAP
There was no magical cash stash. The bungled theft resulted in Habiyakare’s death and Alhassan being sentenced to more than a decade in jail.
The rapper, who performed under the name Lyr1cure7, had friends over on the evening of August 24, 2021, when a knock came at the door.
As the victim approached the entrance, the then-18-year-old Alhassan burst through, smashing glass around them.
A scuffle ensued and Habiyakare was pushed through the hallway and into the living room.
“Woah, woah, you’re going to shoot me?” Habiyakare said.
Pointing his sawn-off rifle at the rapper, Alhassan fired a single shot piercing his chest and leaving the rapper to bleed to death as the intruders fled.
Alhassan was on Thursday jailed for 13 years with a non-parole period of eight years after pleading guilty to homicide by firearm and handling stolen goods.
Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale said a fist fight had broken out at Habiyakare’s house three days before the planned home invasion.
“You learned of that incident and opportunistically planned a home invasion of his home (in the belief) that his associates would be blamed for the crime,” he said.
Detectives would later find a locked safe inside Habiyakare’s home containing $41,000.
Three months after the killing, Alhassan was planning another home invasion but his accomplices were arrested before it could be executed.
Alhassan befriended two people who he thought were criminals offering work, but they were covert police officers, to whom he sold a sawn-off shotgun and confessed his involvement in the home invasion but said a co-offender had fired the fatal shot.
“Not withstanding someone had died at your hands, you agreed to provide another gun,” the judge said.
Alhassan later denied his admissions and then disputed he had gone to the rapper’s home with the expectation he would be there.
“You expected him to be home and that’s why you acted opportunistically … That’s why you and your co-offenders went armed to the teeth,” Beale said.
In his sentencing, the judge referred to character references from family portraying Alhassan as quiet, shy and non-violent, and his offending as out of character, but questioned his remorse.
He baulked at a psychologist report’s findings that Alhassan was truly remorseful and had good prospects of rehabilitation, instead labelling his co-operation as “self-serving”.
Habiyakare’s father, Belthrand, said the family had used their savings and personal loans to build a centre named after his son in their home of Burundi, in East Africa.
“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 previously read to the court.
He remained devastated by his son’s death and suffered panic attacks, the judge said.
Alhassan stared straight ahead while Beale handed down his sentence, with his father, Abdul, and family members in court to support him.
Co-offenders Daniel Sisal and Mohamed Mohamed pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were jailed for four years and nine years, respectively.
AAP
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