The man is accused of shooting his neighbor with a 12-gauge rifle over a trivial border dispute in Brownsburg-Chatham in 2020. had confessed everything after a long interrogation.
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“I collapsed,” Howard Charles Kirby explained his crime in a video broadcast in English to the jury on Thursday during his trial, which has been taking place for three weeks at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse.
It was just before 4 a.m., near the end of an intensive interrogation conducted by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and filmed the night after the crime.
Taken from an uploaded video
Howard Charles Kirby, defendant
The 78-year-old is accused of the premeditated murder of his immediate neighbor Bonnie-Lyn Finnigan on October 14, 2020.
For years
That day, the mother of five was shot dead on her property by a shot from a 12-gauge shotgun, which reportedly left more than 140 holes in her body.
The tragedy was captured by surveillance cameras installed in the 62-year-old lady’s modest home on Chemin Édina. She would have been afraid of the defendant, with whom she had had a conflictual relationship for years.
Courtesy of the victim’s family
Bonnie-Lyn Finnigan, here surrounded by three of her five children. On the left is her daughter Kelly Flynn and on the right is her daughters Crystal Finnigan and Katie Flynn.
“There was a gradation of events. “It escalated pretty quickly, but it lasted almost 20 years,” Crystal Finnigan, one of the victim’s daughters, testified Thursday.
“She was scared, angry and emotional,” she continued. She thought the world wouldn’t believe her.”
The fateful video was therefore viewed by the jurors. We see a person on an elevated part of the ground pulling the victim who collapses.
Bonnie-Lyn Finnigan was motionless in the seconds after the shot and would have had no chance.
Another neighbor about 500 meters away quickly confided to the local authorities that the murder weapon could be found in her garage.
branches
Kirby, who supposedly hid it there, was then quickly arrested by the SQ, who questioned him for a long time.
To gain his trust, Detective Sergeant Pier-Luc Brisson uncovers his childhood, his failed marriage, the fact that he has no children and his dog. They talked about hockey and even about Maurice Richard, who was said to have refereed one of Kirby’s games.
After several attempts, Kirby gave up. He then explained his motivation for killing what he considered a “strange” neighbor.
“I called several times. There was a break-in and nothing happened. She was cutting branches. She went on and on. And this happened after the court verdicts,” said the detainee, dressed in a white jumpsuit whose clothes had been sent for examination.
Anyone who would not have appreciated Ms. Finnigan’s encroachment on his country continued by coldly describing the scene.
Evidence submitted in court
The 62-year-old woman tried to escape from her killer shortly before she was shot on October 14, 2020.
Kirby later refused to view the security camera footage.
“It’s still in my head. I’m processing the information,” he said, swaying a few times and looking nervous.
He told Investigator Brisson that he was lucid and “understood” what awaited him.
The public prosecutor’s office concluded its case on Friday. Kirby should be able to start playing defense sometime next week.
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