Brother died in gang-related homicide in Burlington in 2022
Vermont News First
A Burlington felon, whose brother was killed in an Old North End execution shooting by a gang member in 2022, was found guilty in federal court Thursday on five felony gun charges, including two counts of aggravated identity theft that helped him illegally purchase two firearms by tricking a federally licensed dealer 2 ½ years ago.
Mohamed S. Mubarak, 28, also was convicted for two counts of illegally purchasing the two 9-mm pistols on Dec. 2 and Dec. 8, 2023 and one charge for being a convicted felon in unlawful possession of firearms during December 2023.
The jury deliberated less than three hours before returning the verdict late Thursday afternoon at the end of the four-day trial.
Defense attorney Kevin M. Henry asked for a polling of the jurors, who all confirmed their verdicts. Henry was granted his request for 60 days to file any post-trial motions. Chief Federal Judge Christina Reiss had rejected motions during the trial by Henry to throw out the charges.
Henry said after the trial his client was disappointed. Mubarak will remain in custody of the U.S. Marshal’s Service.
Mubarak, also known as Moh Guap, had traded $50 of crack cocaine to get to be able to use the driver’s license of Yesi Garelnabi, 34, of Burlington to make two purchases of 9-mm pistols at a Milton gun shop in December 2023, court records note.
Mubarak could not legally purchase any firearms because of his criminal record, which includes two convictions for escape and one for larceny from a person in 2016. He also has two criminal convictions for providing false information to police, records show.
Mubarak looked close enough to Garelnabi that his driver’s license tricked two store employees, according to testimony. Court records also note he had a history of domestic abuse and police were called on a near weekly basis to Mubarak’s residence on Garden Street in South Burlington for domestic incidents with his partner.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michelle Arra and Katherine Flynn presented 11 witnesses over two full days of testimony. They included two former girlfriends, Julia Conti and Kylee Ward and three members of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, including Special Agent Samuel Brown, the lead investigator.
“This is a case about lies and guns,” Arra said in her opening and closing statements to the jury.
Mubarak did not take the witness stand. Henry did not present any defense witnesses, but instead focused on poking holes in the testimony of the prosecution witnesses.
Henry, a former South Burlington Police officer, during his closing argument noted holes in the government case, including the prosecution never showed the jury the store had a federal gun license – an element of the charges.
Monday was spent picking a jury of 11 men and four women, including alternates. Thursday was spent on closing arguments and with Judge Reiss explaining all the relevant portions of the law that the jurors should follow in making their decision. They got the case about 2 p.m.
An aggravated identity theft charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in federal prison and is consecutive to any other sentence imposed in a case. If the trial convictions stand, Reiss will sentence Mubarak based on a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office.
The indictment asked that the two 9-mm pistols be forfeited to the government, if Mubarak was convicted on the charge of being a felon in possession of firearms.
Essex Police Officer Robert Fournier testified about recovering the second handgun — a pink SCCY 9-mm pistol – during an unrelated gun-brandishing incident at a Susie Wilson Road apartment on Oct. 25, 2024.
The federal case began to unfold on Saturday March 23, 2024 when South Burlington Police were called to a shooting at the Dorset Commons apartment complex, directly across from the city’s high school and Tuttle Middle School. A gunshot was fired from a second-floor apartment and landed in the first-floor residence that was shared by a woman and her younger daughter, city police said.
When South Burlington Police checked the upstairs apartment at 435 Dorset Street, Ciotti, 27, was residing there. Mubarak was at the apartment and testimony on Tuesday revealed that he provided police a false name, Aiden Mubarak, with a 2003 date of birth.
He also encouraged Ward, his then-girlfriend, to go along with his lie, court papers show. Police later, after going back to the first-floor apartment, returned upstairs, only to determine that Mubarak had jumped off a second-floor balcony to make his escape. Mubarak grabbed the shell casing before he left, court records note.
Police Officer Caleb Moore testified that he tracked Mubarak through the snow until his footprints ended near the city fire station on some pavement and was apparently picked up by a car.
Moore later found a 9-mm Canik gun box with a serial number discarded in a trash can in Ciotti’s kitchen and a trace by the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives showed the gun, which was missing, had been sold on Dec. 2, 2023 at Antiquities & Arms in Milton. Investigation revealed the second firearm, a SCCY 9-mm pistol, was also sold a few days later to somebody also claiming to be Garelnabi and using his ID.
Former South Burlington Sgt. Michael DeFiore, who captured Mubarak on video providing a false name and date of birth, and Detective Cpl. Connor Lamay also testified about the Dorset Street case.
Messages and photographs recovered from Ciotti’s phone show Mubarak discussing trying to buy guns in late November and December 2023. Mubarak noted he wanted to buy multiple guns and had somebody else’s ID that he would use to make the buys. The license was due to expire Jan. 8, 2024. One color picture shown the jury had Mubarak sitting on a child’s large plastic play structure on Christmas Day 2023 with four firearms, including one long gun and three handguns. Two were believed to be the purchased weapons.
Vermont State Rep. Michael Morgan, R-West Milton/Grand Isle, whose relatives own the federally licensed gun shop, testified that he was present when the customer picked up the first pistol on Dec. 8, 2023 after the FBI had cleared the sale after the 3-day wait period. He and his father reviewed the Vermont driver’s license.
Garelnabi of King Street was sentenced in January to 15 months in federal prison for knowingly possessing a stolen loaded 9-mm Glock with a 32-round magazine. It was taken from a car about a minute after it was parked at the Gutterson Fieldhouse at the University of Vermont about 1:10 p.m. March 9, 2025. His prison sentence will run concurrent with any time imposed on state charges and Garelnabi also was assessed $750 in restitution and federal court costs. The judge also ordered Garelnabi to serve three years of supervised release when he is free from federal prison.
Garelnabi played soccer at both Johnson State and Lyndon State Colleges before graduating in 2016. Burlington, South Burlington and UVM are among the police agencies in Chittenden County that had dealt with Garelnabi in recent years, mostly for illegally entering cars, stealing items, including credit cards and then trying to either use or sell the items for his drug habit, records show.
Mubarak is the older brother of Hussein Mubarak, who was 21 when he was gunned down about 7:45 p.m. July 7, 2022 near Luck Street and Intervale Avenue after leaving his Riverside Avenue apartment, police said. Up to five shots were fired and at least two struck him in the head, police said. He died just before midnight.
The homicide came five months after a shooter had peppered the occupied Mubarak home in the apartment complex at 669 Riverside Avenue. Eight people were home when the gunman, Abdiaziz “Drill” Abdhikadir, 22, of Intervale Avenue unloaded his handgun, police said. Burlington Police collected nine bullet casings and two projectiles.
Abdhikadir has been considered one of the top poster children of what is drastically wrong with the Vermont Juvenile Court system, authorities have said. He had been arrested 23 times as a teen-ager and was a person of interest or suspect in 34 other cases between 2015 and 2022, police said.
The shooting at the Riverside Avenue apartment was resolved when State’s Attorney Sarah George struck a deal that allowed Abdhikadir, who was initially charged with attempted murder, to plead to a reduced count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the Feb. 12, 2022 shooting. He was sentenced to 5-to-7 years in prison as part of the plea deal.
George later struck a second plea deal in the execution-style homicide case that allowed Abdhikadir to get a 14-year prison term for killing Mubarak, his childhood friend, records show. George reduced the charge to voluntary manslaughter and two counts of obstruction of justice. The penalty is running concurrently with the earlier aggravated assault for spraying the occupied apartment, records show.
The victim, Hussein Mubarak was sentenced in federal court in May 2022 to 10 months in prison for possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, records show. He was carrying a semiautomatic handgun when arrested by Burlington Police on Sept. 5, 2021, records indicate.