‘If the Car There Need the Hit Squad’: A Crown Factum Puts the Project South Murder Plot on Signal, With Aliases, Prices and a Split of the Money (August 17, 2026)
TORONTO — The single most consequential sentence in the Project South record is nine words long and was typed into an encrypted messaging app: “If the car there need the hit squad.” Crown prosecutors filed it in Ontario Superior Court last month, and it became public on Monday.
The factum, reported for the first time by CBC News in a story posted at 4:00 a.m. on Monday, August 17, 2026, is built on chats recovered from seized cellphones. What those chats describe is not a conspiracy in the traditional sense — not a fixed crew with a hierarchy — but a job board. A target’s personal details are packaged and circulated. The work is offered around. Prices are negotiated. Someone accepts.
The target was a senior corrections officer at the Toronto South Detention Centre, whose identity is protected by a publication ban. The allegations have not been tested in court.
What the Factum Alleges
- The package: A headshot of the jail official, a photo of his vehicle, a map of his address and the address itself — circulated on Signal in the days before June 20, 2025.
- The source of the data: A search of the Ministry of Transportation’s secure database, believed by investigators to have been accessed unlawfully by a Toronto police officer.
- The alleged broker chain: Dequon Lemonious (alias “Danny Phantom”) supplied information to Median Jackson (alias “Lebron James”), who prosecutors allege subcontracted jobs to others for money.
- The economics: The two are alleged to have discussed recruiting further individuals, the price of each job, and how the money would be split.
- The parallel offer: Devonte Barker-Campbell (alias “Dwayne Casey”) sent the same target package to a user called “Thunder,” who declined. Hours later he offered it to a user called “Reality.”
- The acceptance: “Reality” replied that his “hitters” were ready. Over the next 36 hours a team was arranged to attend the official’s home.
- In the intercepted vehicle: Almar Heath, two young people who cannot be identified, a loaded handgun, surgical masks and gloves, and a phone open to GPS directions to the corrections officer’s address.
- Charged with conspiracy to murder the official: Heath, Jackson, Lemonious, Barker-Campbell and two youths.
The Grandfather at the Door
The factum sets out an earlier visit that has not previously been detailed. Two days before the takedown, minutes after the jail official arrived home from work, his grandfather answered the door to a masked man pointing a gun and demanding to know who owned a vehicle in the driveway.
The grandfather got the door closed. A group fled in a blue Acura. Police spotted the same car near the home around the same hour the following evening, and again the day after — that third visit under surveillance, which produced the early-morning takedown and the arrests.
That sequence matters because it establishes repetition. This was not one attempt that failed. It was three approaches to the same address over three consecutive evenings, which is the behaviour of people working from an address they were handed rather than a target they knew.
Where the Police Officer Fits
The reason Project South is a police corruption case and not simply an attempted murder case is the MTO search. While investigating the murder plot, York Regional Police concluded that Toronto police Const. Timothy Barnhardt allegedly conducted the unlawful database search that produced the official’s information — the same information that then appeared, according to the factum, in the hands of two separate people shopping the job.
Barnhardt’s lawyer has previously said the defence will be conducted in court rather than in the media. Nearly 30 people were charged in Project South at the outset, including seven serving Toronto police officers and one retired constable. One of those officers, since retired, pleaded guilty last month. One civilian’s charge was stayed.
The Restaurant Shooting in the Margins
Buried in the filing is a second incident. A video of the same blue Acura was allegedly found on Jackson’s phone, inside a conversation in which Jackson and Lemonious are alleged to have been directing an unidentified person in relation to a shooting at a restaurant the week before. The person sent the video complaining something was wrong with the car, and a different vehicle was used for that shooting instead.
If that allegation holds, the same two men were running two jobs in the same fortnight with the same broken car, which is the clearest indication in the record that the alleged hit on the jail official was not a one-off favour but a line of business. It is also the structural cousin of the contract-shooting economy this desk has tracked across the GTA all year, and of the enforcement-for-hire arrangements documented in our profile of the Alkhalil brothers.
Four Days in June 2025, Read Backwards From a Court Filing
Standing of This File
Every allegation above is drawn from a Crown factum — a document setting out the prosecution’s theory of its own case. It is not a finding. None of it has been tested in court, and every accused named here is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Counsel for Heath and Barker-Campbell declined to comment. Counsel for Jackson did not respond. Lemonious is not currently represented. The identity of the corrections officer is protected by a publication ban, and Gangland Files will not publish identifying details about him or his family beyond what the reporting already contains.
Primary Sources
- CBC News (Angelina King): “Uncovered texts reveal alleged gun-for-hire network tied to attempted Project South hit” — posted August 17, 2026, 4:00 a.m. EDT. Opened and confirmed at source before publication of this briefing.