The daytime stabbings in Ottawa’s Chinatown neighbourhood on April 23, 2021 were swift, brutal and apparently unprovoked, a jury heard last week at the opening of Honor Charley’s murder trial.
The two stabbings, committed about two hours apart that morning, were captured on surveillance video from the Petro-Canada gas station at the corner of Bronson Avenue and Somerset Street and from storefronts along Somerset Street West.
Charley was seen on video standing in line behind both victims at the same gas station shortly before each stabbing.
Carl Reinboth, 64, an outreach worker at the Somerset West Community Health Clinic, was stabbed in the back at 9:40 a.m., a few blocks away from the clinic where he worked, as he had stopped briefly on the sidewalk to light a cigarette.
Surveillance video from a Somerset Street storefront captured the fatal stabbing as Charley was seen approaching Reinboth unnoticed from behind, drawing a kitchen knife from his jacket pocket and plunging it into the unsuspecting victim’s back.
Charley was then seen running away and heading south onto Cambridge Street while Reinboth pleaded desperately for help. Reinboth was rushed to hospital, where he arrived with no vital signs and died that morning.
Charley pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in Reinboth’s death at the outset of his jury trial on Jan. 6. He likewise pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and attempted murder in a second stabbing later that same morning.
Guocai Sun, 84, was stabbed in the neck as he was leaving the same Petro-Canada gas station and convenience store at 11:48 a.m. Surveillance video showed Charley in line behind Sun in the moments before the stabbing.
The elderly man was seen thanking the cashier and waving goodbye after making his purchase. Charley was then seen following him to the door, then quickly stabbing him in the neck, again, apparently unprovoked.
The surveillance video continued to show Charley approaching the cashier, knife still in his hand as the cashier “feared for his life,” prosecutors said, while Charley robbed the cash register.
Sun staggered around the store and lost a “significant amount” of blood. He “miraculously survived” the attack, Crown prosecutors told the jury, after doctors performed a series of life-saving surgeries.
Surveillance video from the same gas station at 676 Somerset Street West also showed Charley in line behind Reinboth, his first stabbing victim, about three minutes before the first attack.
Charley was seen on the video following Reinboth into the store around 9:37 a.m., standing behind him at the cash, then following him outside.
Reinboth, a much-loved staff member and harm reduction worker at the community health clinic, appeared to have no interactions with Charley before he was suddenly stabbed on the street. Charley fled from the scene, leaving the IKEA-brand kitchen knife lodged in the victim’s back.
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The knife penetrated Reinboth’s chest cavity between the shoulder blade and spine and severed his aorta.
Sun was out shopping for groceries that morning. Neither of the victims knew Charley or had any interactions with him prior to the stabbings, prosecutors said.
“They were strangers to each other,” Crown attorney John Semenoff told the jury.
Charley was briefly detained by police about an hour after the first stabbing, but police found no weapons on him and let him go, prosecutors told the jury.
After fleeing the first scene, Charley briefly hid under a residential porch on Cambridge Street. He was next spotted around 11 a.m. at a dog park on the corner of Bronson Avenue and Slater Street. Police were called to the scene after Charley allegedly attempted to steal a woman’s dog.
He was questioned and briefly detained by the Ottawa police officer who responded to the call, Const. Goran Beric, who searched Charley, found no weapons and let him go.
The lead homicide investigator on the case, Det. Kevin Jacobs, told this newspaper in 2021 that the responding officer “had no knowledge that Mr. Charley was involved in the homicide at that time, when he dealt with him.”
Beric was later involved in an unrelated assault on Aug. 4, 2021 at an Ottawa Community Housing complex on Bronson Avenue. He was found guilty of assault while on duty in that case and was handed a suspended sentence in January 2024. He is awaiting an Ottawa Police Service disciplinary hearing, which is scheduled for Jan. 27.
After the officer released him from the dog park, Charley then headed back to the same Petro-Canada convenience store, searching for two phones that he had lost along the way. The phones were eventually found by a resident on Cambridge Street, who turned them over to police later that same day.
Investigators would later find a drop of Charley’s blood in the same area of the store where he was seen standing around 11:30 a.m.
Sun, the second stabbing victim, was then seen entering the store about 15 minutes later with bags and a backpack full of produce. Charley was seen re-entering the store and standing behind Sun with his hand in his right pocket just before he abruptly stabbed the 84-year-old man.
Charley was arrested around noon on the day of the stabbings when another officer spotted him walking on Cambridge Street.
He became “physically aggressive” during his arrest, prosecutors said, and broke out of his handcuffs before he was shot by a Taser and sedated.
Charley, who is represented by defence lawyer Michael Smith, has admitted he is the one seen on surveillance video stabbing both men.
Charley’s trial is scheduled to extend for three weeks and the jury is expected to hear testimony from the gas station employees who interacted with Charley that morning and the eyewitnesses on the street who saw Charley stabbing Reinboth.
“This trial isn’t about who killed Mr. Reinboth and who stabbed Mr. Sun. It’s all captured on video and Mr. Charley’s DNA was left behind, both at the Petro-Canada store and on the knife left in Mr. Reinboth’s back,” said Crown attorney Anthony Does in his opening address to the jury.
“It is admitted that it was Mr. Charley who committed these stabbings,” Does told the jury. “This trial is to decide whether Honor Charley is guilty of the second-degree murder of Carl Reinboth and the aggravated assault and attempted murder of Guocai Sun.
“This trial will be about the decisions Mr. Charley made on April 23, 2021, his intentions, his reasons, his motivations.”
No motive has been made clear in the stabbings and the evidence against Charley has not been fully tested in court.
Those who knew Charley, who was 20 at the time of the stabbings, expressed shock and disbelief at the charges. Charley graduated from Nepean High School and was a well-liked, talented aspiring football star for the Bel-Air Norsemen. Charley played for the minor-league team for three years. His coaches said they were shocked by the allegations and his arrest.
His trial is also expected to hear evidence from a police forensic investigator who examined the two phones that Charley lost after the first stabbing.
According to Semenoff, Charley conducted several internet searches after stabbing Reinboth. He searched for “stabbing years Ottawa” and “Canadian charges” on his phone.
In the days before the stabbing, Charley made several other curious internet queries. He searched for “grandiose thinking” and “psychopaths and dogs,” Semenoff said.
He also conducted a search for “people who don’t care about right and wrong.”
The trial is also expected to hear evidence from the emergency room doctor who treated all three people involved in the stabbings — the two victims, Reinboth and Sun, and later, Charley.
Does told the jury that Charley was “coherent” after his sedation wore off in the hospital and he exhibited “no evidence of psychosis or delirium” and no signs of intoxication.
Does asked the jury to pay particular attention to “how and where” the two victims were stabbed. Both received blows with “considerable force to life-threatening areas of their body.”
Prosecutors also asked the jury to consider the meaning of Charley’s internet searches when assessing his intent.
The trial continues in Superior Court with Justice Robert Pelletier presiding.
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