State Street in Biddeford. Ahmed Sharif, 27, of Lewiston, was shot and killed in an apartment there Friday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
A Saco man was arrested Monday night and charged with murder in the shooting death of a Lewiston man in Biddeford on Friday.
Lorenze A. Labonte, 25, was taken into custody around 6:30 p.m. at his residence at 103 Temple St. in Saco and charged with murder in the death of 27-year-old Ahmed Sharif, said Shannon Moss, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Members of the Maine State Police Tactical Team and Crisis Negotiation Team made the arrest.
Moss said that Labonte will make his initial appearance in York County District Court on Tuesday. Investigators will remain overnight at the Temple Street residence executing a search warrant.
Biddeford police found Sharif dead in an apartment on State Street on Friday.
Earlier Monday, there were no signs of the crime scene that had overtaken the small, residential street Friday afternoon. The ambulances were gone, the police had left. The crime scene tape that had been blocking the yard and driveway was taken down except for a small scrap stuck to the door frame late Monday morning.
Katherine Snow, who lives across the street from where Sharif was shot, said Monday that she didn’t know Sharif and that the apartment where he died belongs to a woman and her two daughters.
A woman who answered the apartment door Monday declined to speak with a reporter, but said she wasn’t there when the shooting happened.
Biddeford police responded to a 911 call around 2:10 p.m. Friday reporting that a person had been shot, Moss said, though she would not elaborate on Sharif’s injuries or where he was shot. Police ruled on Sunday that his death was a homicide after an autopsy by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta.
Snow said she heard sirens Friday afternoon, but didn’t think anything of it until her boyfriend got home and asked what was happening across the street. Snow said she never heard any gunshots, but when she looked outside her window shortly before 3 p.m., there were two ambulances and several police officers.
Katherine Snow looks across at where a shooting took place on State Street in Biddeford on Friday, as she describes the scene on Monday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
The apartment was covered in police tape, Snow said, blocking the front door and yard. A small piece of “evidence” tape was still stuck to her neighbor’s door frame Monday afternoon.
Snow said she’s known the family for years but said she didn’t recognize Sharif.
“They haven’t told us anything,” Snow said Monday. “It’s scary.”
Sharif was living in an apartment in Lewiston, but also lived in Westbrook and South Portland in recent years, according to court records. It’s not clear why he was in Biddeford on Friday afternoon.
A criminal background check through the Maine Bureau of Identification shows Sharif served several brief stints in jail and was on probation for various misdemeanor charges in Cumberland County and one in Penobscot County. He was scheduled for arraignment on Dec. 6 in Androscoggin County Superior Court on a charge of violating conditions of his release, but it’s unclear what case those conditions stemmed from.
Staff Writer Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.
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