Notorious TCHC unit focus of trial
220 Oak St. takes centre stage during opening of murder case
The ugly side of what goes on behind the walls of one of downtown Toronto’s most notorious addresses has been centre stage in a two-day-old murder trial of a resident accused of killing a woman and cutting her body into pieces with a hack saw. In her opening address, Crown attorney Bev Richards told jurors Toronto Community Housing’s 220 Oak St. “is a reflection of the very heart of a big city like Toronto.” She said it houses ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds “some fighting demons of addiction, some hoping they will remain in recovery and some just trying to make their way in a new country.”
Witnesses have described a backdrop of broken elevators, stairways used for crack smoking, chronic bed bugs and highly visible drug-dealing, sometimes involving non-residents.
Melissa Cooper didn’t live in the highrise near Gerrard and River Sts., but she knew people who did and was known to visit, including sometimes to score and do drugs. She was making strides to get on a drug and alcohol-free path, but there were slips.
Around midnight on the evening of April 14, 2016, Cooper stopped by Maurice Liberty’s apartment and shared a couple of Molson Canadian Cold Shots, a strong beer that comes in a small can. He said he declined her offer of a small bottle of whiskey, but she drank one herself.
“Once in a blue moon,” they smoked crack together but not that night, Liberty testified Tuesday at the trial of Ian Albert Ohab who has pleaded guilty to indignity to a dead body but not guilty to first-degree murder. Cooper “seemed pretty sober to me,” he added.
Liberty further testified that Cooper abruptly left his 18thfloor unit and told him “I’ll be back,” leaving behind her knapsack. He believed she was going to visit his cousin, who lives on the 15th floor. When she failed to return, Liberty rode the elevators looking for her, surveillance footage showing him tugging at doors that don’t close, smoking and biting his fingernails.
Under cross-examination, defence lawyer Philip Klumak asked Liberty if the reason he was searching was “she was going to look for crack cocaine for the two of you and when she didn’t come back you were concerned,” about not getting a “fix.”
“Not so ... that’s an unfair question,” Liberty said.
He agreed Cooper left his apartment to look for crack, but said he went looking for her because he was worried about her well-being — not because he wanted to get high.
The prosecution alleges that Cooper had a chance encounter with Ohab on a building elevator. Surveillance captured “some interaction” between them, before they got off the elevator at the 23rd floor and turn left in the direction of his apartment.
She was never seen alive again. Her torso was discovered several days later behind a Broadview Ave. meat shop, while a recycling sorter discovered her arm on a conveyer belt. The pathologist could not determine her cause of death or when she died.
The trial continues.