Crown argues Pinel brothers had intention for murder in Sud-Ouest homicide
While making the Crown’s closing arguments in a murder trial at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday, a prosecutor argued two brothers acted in concert and had the intention required to find both guilty of the murder of a Sud-Ouest resident.
Prosecutor Philippe Vallières-Roland delivered the Crown’s closing arguments in the trial of Chad and Jayden Pinel, two brothers accused of the second-degree murder of 27-year-old Conor Patrick O’Loughlin. The victim was stabbed in the first-floor hallway of the apartment building where he lived in on St-Antoine St. W. during the early morning hours of May 18, 2024.
On Monday, defence lawyers Isabelle Lamarche and Isabella Teolis argued Chad Pinel, 22, was acting in a form of legitimate defence to protect his younger brother Jayden, 20, during an altercation with O’Loughlin. During the trial, both brothers said O’Loughlin sucker punched the younger sibling more than once while he had a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bottle of water in the other during the brief altercation.
On Tuesday, Vallières-Roland asked the jury to compare the brothers’ version of events to that of Crown witnesses. O’Loughlin’s girlfriend, Claudia Oberman, told the jury the younger sibling tried to strike her dog twice while it barked in the hallway. Also, Jonathan Lin, a friend of O’Loughlin’s who was visiting from British Columbia, said Jayden Pinel snatched his cellphone from his hands, after he called 911, and threw it against a wall.
“Chad Pinel said, during his testimony, that he stabbed the victim to defend his brother. Words are important. And the defence of Chad Pinel says he acted in a legitimate defence of someone other than himself,” the prosecutor said, adding Chad Pinel made no reference to this when he was arrested and questioned by a Montreal police homicide investigator hours after the stabbing. “He saved this revelation for you (the jury) during the trial. That is his choice. We’re not putting that into question. Not at all. But when you analyze his credibility, it is the same Chad Pinel who admitted to lying between 30 and 40 times (during the interrogation) to hide his implication in the death of Conor O’Loughlin.”
Vallières-Roland described Oberman as the most important witness in the trial as she was the only witness who did not consume drugs or alcohol before O’Loughlin was killed.
The victim was found to be well over the legal blood-alcohol limit required to have someone charged in Quebec with impaired driving. A pathologist also found O’Loughlin had consumed cocaine and a form of amphetamine before he was killed. He had been to two bars with Lin and another friend who was visiting from British Columbia before the altercation.
On the other side of things, the brothers spent hours at a bar and then the Montreal Casino with two young women before all four went to the apartment building where the women lived two doors away from O’Loughlin. One of the women said it appeared the brothers were consuming a pink powder while they partied. She also said she tossed the powder into a garden outside the apartment building before the police arrived.
Witnesses told the jury O’Loughlin was curious to know what was behind the loud music that could be heard from the women’s apartment, after 4 a.m., and decided to knock on their door. That is how the altercation began.
One of the women who lived in the apartment said that, after a cordial and brief discussion with O’Loughlin, the brothers appeared to hold a meeting inside her bathroom before they left and came face to face with O’Loughlin a second time in the hallway and a fight broke out.
Vallières-Roland referred to the meeting held in the bathroom twice on Tuesday and argued it appeared the stabber intended to damage vital organs based on where O’Loughlin was stabbed in the abdomen.
The knife, which was never recovered, went 17 cm deep into the victim. It damaged his liver and penetrated his heart, the pathologist told the jury.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Catherine Perreault told the jury she plans to deliver her final instructions to them on Thursday. She also told the panel to be prepared to be sequestered for their deliberation some time Thursday afternoon.
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