Three British men have pleaded guilty in Canada over the death of restaurant owner Sharif Rahman after an unpaid-bill row outside a curry house in Owen Sound. Robert Evans Jr admitted manslaughter on Friday, while Robert Busby Evans and Barry Evans each pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crime.
The pleas bring a sharp legal turn to a case that began in August 2023 and crossed an ocean before it reached court. Rahman, 44, died a week after an alleged physical altercation in the street outside the restaurant following an argument over an unpaid $150 bill. He was found in the street by a staff member and later died in hospital in London, Ontario.
For Rahman’s family, the guilty pleas are the first clear admission of responsibility in a case that has already moved through police arrests in Scotland, extradition hearings in Edinburgh and a trial track in Canada. Robert Evans Jr, now 25, is due to be sentenced next month, giving the court one remaining decision that will determine the punishment for the man who admitted the manslaughter charge.
The case also carried an awkward cross-border wrinkle from the start. Canadian media outlets reported that the three were on holiday visas and left shortly after the altercation, yet they were later extradited from Scotland last year after all three gave their consent at separate hearings last October before Sheriff Julius Komorowski at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. Police Scotland arrested Robert Evans Jr and Robert Busby Evans in Edinburgh and Barry Evans in Dalkeith, and the three are believed to be from Manchester.
That sequence matters because it turned what began as a street dispute into an international prosecution. The two older men, aged 49 and 56, have now been taken into the custody of the Canadian Border Agency for repatriation, while the youngest defendant remains before the court for sentencing. The guilty pleas mean the central facts of the case are no longer in dispute, but they do not yet answer how the court will weigh a death that followed what started as a $150 bill in a restaurant.
Rahman was originally from Bangladesh and was described as a father of one, details that sit far from the courtroom but close to the heart of why the case has drawn attention. For now, the legal focus is on next month’s sentence for Robert Evans Jr. The rest has largely been settled by the pleas themselves.
