Split decision in murder trial

Jury convicts man but acquits his ex-lover in case of couple dubbed ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’

A Toronto jury has convicted David Obregón Castro of second-degree murder for fatally stabbing a 21year-old woman in her Annex apartment, a case the Crown called a love triangle gone terribly wrong with a fatal result.

But the jury acquitted his former lover and co-accused, Sarai López Iglesias, accepting her testimony that she was an abused woman who was in the apartment under pressure from Obregón Castro, a guncarrying drug dealer who denied wielding the knife.

The verdicts mean jurors rejected the prosecution’s theory that Obregón Castro and López Iglesias, both 29, were guilty of first-degree murder after carrying out a plan to kill Abbegail Elliott on May 23, 2018.

The Crown attorneys alleged a jealous and humiliated López Iglesias used a knife to stab Elliott on the balcony of her fourth-floor apartment at 70 Spadina Avenue and that she was aided by Obregón Castro, who admitted he was armed with a loaded revolver that he fired twice inside the apartment.

An autopsy determined Elliott suffered defensive wounds to her hands and was stabbed twice in her chest, near her heart, and another in her back.

During her closing address last week, prosecutor Karen Simone told the jury there was “overwhelming” evidence that López Iglesias was consumed with jealousy after Elliott told her about her brief fling with Obregón Castro.

To demonstrate the animosity and high emotions after the revelation, the prosecution called many vulgar, profanity-laden texts and social media postings.

“... Ever since you cheated, most days I dread waking up,” López Iglesias wrote in a 2018 text message to Obregón Castro. “I hate my life more than you ever know. U are worst than a drug to me. I never felt so happy for once in my life. And then that same thing hurt me and took it away.”

Two days before Elliott’s death, the two women squared off behind the building at 70 Spadina Avenue. The prosecution said López Iglesias lost her knife in the fight, which Elliott boasted about taking in an online post. During the altercation, Elliott’s male friend intervened, striking López Iglesias with a pipe and enraging Obregón Castro. As payback, while standing on the street, he fired a couple of gunshots toward Elliott’s balcony. No one was injured.

Simone and co-counsel Anna Leggett argued López Iglesias and Obregón Castro were so enraged by everything that went down they showed up at the apartment to kill Elliott. López Iglesias was brandishing a knife — she denied this — and he had a loaded gun (which he admitted firing twice as a “warning.”)

Obregón Castro testified he had no motive to hurt Elliot and went to her apartment to retrieve his belongings.

Jurors saw López Iglesias’s handwritten letter — sent after their arrest and while both were jailed — where she professed her love for him, signing off “Somos, (we are) Bonnie and Clyde,” a nod to the notorious Depression-era American outlaws. López Iglesias testified she wrote what she did trying to stay on his “good side.”

Defence lawyer Nathan Gorham, who represented López Igelsias with co-counsel Breana Vandebeek, asked the jury to consider the context of the evidence appearing to show López Iglesias’s devotion to Obregón Castro.

“The cycle of abuse and intimate partner abuse is a much more complicated and much more difficult to understand than just saying ‘oh, you told the person you loved them, therefore they really weren’t abusing you,’” he said during closing arguments.

Some of the most toxic and abusive relationships involve one partner whose “love allows the other person to exploit them to continue to abusing them and keeping them there,” he said. He reminded jurors that López Iglesias had reported Obregón Castro to Crime Stoppers

“The idea she wasn’t afraid of him is really absurd,” Gorham said. Nor was López Iglesias “the type of person who would thrust a knife into a person’s midsection,” he said. “Imagine how callous you have to be.” Gorham devoted much of his cross examination of Obregón Castro going over his violent past, including stabbing a close friend and shooting a rival drug dealer in the legs, which he called giving someone a “leg warmer.”

The jury also heard López Iglesias suffered sexual abuse as a child and battles mental health issues.

The case was legally complex and the jury was excused countless times while the six lawyers spent hours arguing how evidence could be properly used. Superior Court Justice Suhail Akhtar thanked jurors for their patience over the many delays that caused the trial to stretch into twelve weeks. The jury began deliberating Thursday around 3 p.m. and returned Saturday at supper hour.

During her closing address, Simone invited jurors to pay particular attention to the evidence of the two men present in the apartment who both put the knife in the hands of López Iglesias. Gorham argued they lied and did so because they feared Obregon Castro.

Obregón Castro’s lawyers, Alana Page and Daisy McCabe-Lokos, acknowledged the jury wasn’t likely to develop “warm feelings” toward their client.

But during her closing arguments Page urged jurors not to convict Obregón Castro based on his prior conduct.

Page asked the jury to consider why her client “would use a knife with a loaded gun in his hand.” (López Iglesias testified he pulled out his knife after his gun jammed.) Moreover, “if David had wanted to harm Abbe, he was more than capable of doing it.”

The only crimes Obregón Castro was guilty of that afternoon was pointing a firearm at one of the men and discharging it inside the tiny apartment, she said. He was convicted of firearms offences.

A sentencing hearing for Obregón Castro is set for January.