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A Toronto man has been sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 16 years for killing a filmmaker whose body was found in a trash compactor in a Liberty Village condo more than three years ago.
Khoa Tra, 36, was sentenced Monday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for second-degree murder in the death of Reeyaz Habib, 53, on June 6, 2023. A jury had found Tran guilty in June this year.
Court heard that Tran, a software developer, was in an ongoing dispute with Habib, his neighbour, over barbecue smoke coming up from Tran’s balcony. Habib lived above Tran in a condo townhouse complex.
Habib’s body was found on June 8, 2023 in a trash compactor in the condo’s underground garbage dumpster in the area of East Liberty Street and Western Battery Road. His body was wrapped in blankets and duct tape with “handles,” court heard.
Justice Kenneth Campbell said in his reasons for sentence that Tran “callously” decided to kill Habib one night, planned some aspects of the murder, then killed him in the middle of the night in his own home.
“The killing of Mr. Habib was a senseless and selfish act by Mr. Tran, which predictably had devastating personal consequences for all of the friends and family of the deceased,” Campbell said.
Campbell also sentenced Isabelle Nguyen, Tran’s wife, 30, to six years for being an accessory after the fact and committing an indignity to a human body. With presentence custody, she will have five years and four and a half months left to serve in prison.
Second-degree murder carries a life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.
Dispute over barbeque smoke escalated, court heard
At trial, Tran testified he was angry at Habib for continuing to complain about his barbeque smoke when he said he tried to compromise.
The Crown argued the dispute escalated after Habib threatened to go to the board to have him removed for condo infractions.
Tran said he was so angry at Habib that he threw the filmmaker’s bicycle in a dumpster in an act of revenge.
He denied killing him and said he was not the person seen in surveillance video throwing items in the condo’s underground garbage compactor, where Habib’s body would be found hours later.
Expert witnesses testified that Tran’s fingerprints were on a note and duct tape on Habib’s body and that DNA from Tran and his wife were also on the tape.
There was neither surveillance video nor any known witnesses who saw what happened to Habib.
Victim was ‘good man,’ judge
In September, family members, friends and neighbours delivered victim impact statements about the loss of Habib, and Campbell said he was clearly a “good man” who is missed by everyone who knew him.
“Mr. Habib was an intelligent, thoughtful and creative man who worked hard in school to get an excellent education, and in the workplace, establishing tremendous careers for himself, first as a successful investment banker, and ultimately in the film industry,” he said.
Campbell said Habib was a son, brother, uncle, neighbour and friend and no one who knew him can make sense of his murder.
“Immediately following his death, the two accused tried to discard him like a piece of garbage in a dumpster — in order to hide this senseless murder, and their own irrational participation in it, or knowledge of it, and its subsequent attempted coverup,” Campbell said.
Body found by operator of trash compactor, judge says
Campbell said if the body had not been found “in such a timely way” by the operator of the trash compactor, the dead body of Habib would have been compacted and put in a landfill site “likely never to be found again.”
He said the taped “handles” around the body revealed DNA of Habib and Tran and Nguyen.
“There seems to be no limit to the violence that one person will inflict upon another, for no good reason. This case is a tragic example of this sad but indisputable fact,” he said.