WINNIPEG -- The Crown and defence are expected to deliver closing arguments Tuesday at the trial of a Winnipeg man accused of killing foster home manager Ricardo Hibi.
Twenty-three-year old Kane Moar has pleaded not guilty to the killing.
On Monday, Moar’s defence lawyer told the court he isn’t calling any witnesses.
Hibi was stabbed to death on December 17, 2018, inside the foster home he ran for boys at 622 McGee Street in the Daniel McIntyre neighbourhood. The 34-year-old had a fiancée and son.
Sandra Bracken, the Crown’s first witness, testified she was the last person to speak to Hibi.
“We were in the middle of talking, when all of the sudden I heard him say, ‘Hey man, this isn’t your house, get out of my house.’”
Bracken said she heard “four or five loud bangs.”
“I was trying to get him to answer to see if he was okay,” she told the court. “I just heard him struggling to breathe.”
Hibi had multiple cameras set up at the home on McGee Street. Crown prosecutors played surveillance video of the attack before the jury.
The footage shows a man in a black jacket walking up to the house around 2:30 p.m. Hibi answers the door, a confrontation erupts, and moments later he falls to the ground.
Forensic specialist Marie-Even Bonicalzi told court bloodstains found on a black jacket the Crown said Moar was wearing matched Hibi’s DNA.
The Crown also called Moar’s younger sisters to testify. They gave police statements back in December 2018 implicating their brother. But on the stand, neither had any memory of what they told investigators.
The Moar case is one of the first homicide trials in the province since the pandemic began.
Masks are mandatory in the Manitoba law courts.
Only four jurors are in the jury box, while the remaining eight are seated in chairs two metres apart.
The Bible is covered in plastic and sprayed with sanitizer after each witness testifies.
