Jury watches chance elevator encounter

Court proceeding followed suspect through surveillance footage Police said they found Melissa Cooper’s torso outside Charlie's Meat and Seafood.

A jury has seen surveillance footage of what the prosecution calls Melissa Cooper’s chance encounter with Ian Albert Ohab on a downtown Toronto apartment elevator, before he allegedly dismembered her with a hack saw.

The prosecution alleges Ian Albert Ohab killed Melissa Cooper in his 23rd floor apartment at 220 Oak St. after the surveillance footage captured their elevator “interaction” at 1:35 a.m. on April 15, 2016, the last time she was seen alive, and April 19, 2016. Ohab, 41, admits he cut up her body and is guilty of the charge of committing an indignity to a dead body. But he has pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.

Jurors hearing the case in Superior Court have heard her cause of death is unknown. The jury has also heard both Cooper and Ohab were drug users.

On Thursday, Ohab’s lawyer, Philip Klumak, asked homicide Det.-Sgt. Terry Browne if he knew Ohab was a drug addict based on what he found in his apartment at 220 Oak St.

Brown agreed that, after the investigation led police to Ohab as a suspect in Cooper’s disappearance, a search of his 23rd floor unit revealed a lot of “drug activity” had been taking place.

The jury spent most of Thursday’s proceeding looking at still photographs of the interior of Ohab’s apartment as well as dozens of snippets of surveillance footage, a lot of it of Ohab getting on and off elevators, sometimes with a bicycle.

The building’s multiple surveillance cameras also captured Ohab coming and going in various locations in the hours and days after Cooper was last seen. Tall and lanky with thick black shoulder-length hair, he can be seen carrying various bags and wheeling a shopping cart containing an item wrapped in a plastic bag.

The Crown alleges that was part of Cooper’s torso, which was discovered behind a Broadview meat shop about a 12-minute walk from the Toronto Community Housing highrise, near Gerrard and River Sts. Her arm was discovered on a conveyer belt at a recycling factory. The rest of her body has never been recovered. Brown testified Ohab’s hair was cut short when he was arrested April 29, 2016.

Jurors also watched surveillance footage of Cooper, on April 15, 2016, at approximately 12:40 a.m., entering the front lobby at 220 Oak wearing a grey hoodie and a backpack.

Maurice Liberty, a 220 Oak St. resident, has testified Cooper spent about half an hour in his apartment before going off in search of crack cocaine.

Cooper struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, but the trial has heard was managing her life better than she had in the past.