Guilty verdict in 2018 murder of group home manager

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This article was published 24/09/2020 (2001 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A jury has found Kane Moar guilty in the 2018 stabbing death of an inner-city group home manager.

Jurors deliberated less than six hours on Thursday before convicting Moar of second-degree murder.

Ricardo Hibi, 34, was stabbed to death Dec. 17, 2018, after answering the door to his McGee Street group home.

“We’ve got some kind of closure with the verdict, but it’s not going to bring him back,” said Candace Woloshyn, Hibi’s fiancée and mother of their young son. “There’s still all that pain and emotion because I don’t have Ric here.”

The mandatory minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

Moar will be sentenced at a later date, at which time Crown and defence lawyers will argue how many years he should serve before he can apply for parole.

Security video at the group home, played for jurors at trial, captured Hibi slumping to the floor 12 seconds after answering the door. Jurors were also shown clips from more than a dozen security cameras prosecutors allege show Moar’s movements in the area in the minutes leading up to and immediately following the killing.

In a video police statement played for jurors, Moar’s sister, Trinity Moar, told investigators Moar showed up at the door of her Toronto Street home the afternoon of the killing, with blood on his hands and a knife in his pocket. He told her he had “done something f—ing crazy” and “messed up” her boyfriend’s “Asian uncle,” Trinity Moar said.

Court heard Trinity Moar’s then-boyfriend, also a witness at the trial, lived at Hibi’s group home and had a history of violence.

Moar wasn’t taken into custody until Jan. 6, 2019, when police cadets found him in the area of Ellice Avenue and Maryland Street and arrested him under the Intoxicated Persons Detention Act.

When Moar’s identity was confirmed, police seized his clothing, including a black, North Face brand winter jacket.

Jurors heard Hibi’s DNA was later connected to the jacket and a blood smear found on the front door of Trinity Moar’s home.

Moar’s lawyers argued the DNA samples were contaminated and cast suspicion on Trinity Moar’s then-boyfriend, who they alleged she was trying to protect in her statement to police.

On Thursday, Queen’s Bench Justice Vic Toews gave the green-light to start deliberations, despite dismissing one juror amid concerns he was exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms Wednesday.

During the trial, jurors did not hear Moar had been released from Stony Mountain Institution just two months before Hibi’s death — and just two months after Moar was involved in the killing of another inmate.

Moar was granted statutory release after serving two-thirds of his sentence for assaulting a man with a hatchet, despite the fact Parole Board of Canada officials had been provided notice he was facing imminent arrest in the beating death of 25-year-old Adam Monias.

Moar and two other inmates pleaded guilty to assault in the August 2018 attack, and were sentenced in December 2019 to 18 months custody.

The three co-accused were originally charged with second-degree murder, but in a plea bargain agreed to admit to the lesser offence. Court heard identification would have been an issue had the case gone to trial.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca