Consumed by jealousy and armed with an axe, Jon Hastings held his terrified girlfriend captive in his Wasagamack First Nation home as he attacked the man he believed had been seeing her.
That Hastings killed 27-year-old Darius Harper isn’t in dispute. What a judge must decide is whether he is guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter.
“This is the epitome of a deliberate killing,” prosecutor Mike Himmelman told King’s Bench Justice Vic Toews, urging him to convict Hastings of first-degree murder. “There is so much evidence of deliberation.”
JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
The Law Courts building in Winnipeg
Court heard testimony at trial that Hastings, 32, and his then-girlfriend were at his home on May 9, 2022, when he started accusing the woman of cheating on him, eventually fixating on Harper.
Hastings, the 35-year-old woman testified, tied her wrists together with packing tape and slashed her face, arms and legs with a filleting knife and axe as he demanded to know who she was seeing “behind his back.”
Hastings held the woman captive for hours in the home, described in court as a shed, locking the door from the outside when he left briefly to get a cigarette.
Some hours later, convinced the woman had been seeing Harper, Hastings showed her a message he had allegedly sent Harper in an effort to lure him to his home.
“All we have to do is wait for (Harper) to come over,” the woman testified Hastings told her, before adding Hastings said he was going to hit Harper “worser” than he did her.
Sometime later, Hastings saw Harper walking outside and beckoned him over to the shed.
Hastings struck Harper in the head with an axe as soon as he walked in the door, the woman testified.
“I (saw) Darius say, ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’ and he looked at me, and that’s when he got hit with the big axe,” the woman said.
The woman said she heard Harper say “Please” one time as Hastings continued to attack Harper with the axe and a knife and beat him for 20 minutes.
Hastings said he was “going to let him bleed out” and told him “nobody was going to touch or bother what’s mine,” the woman testified.
When Harper died, Hastings said, “Look, he’s already gone” and started laughing, the woman said.
Worried community members were wondering about the woman’s whereabouts, Hastings released the victim and told her to return in an hour or he would harm her children. The woman didn’t return, and police were contacted.
RCMP arrived at Hastings’s home to find Harper’s body wrapped in a roll of poly.
Defence lawyer Steve Brennan conceded Hastings was guilty of forcible confinement and aggravated assault regarding the woman but argued a case could be made for manslaughter in Harper’s death.
Brennan said the woman’s testimony that Hastings had been taking pills prior to the killing and evidence a crack pipe and drug paraphernalia had been found in the home suggest he was intoxicated at the time.
“The accused to some extent was under the influence of some substance… that may account for his very bizarre behaviour,” Brennan said.
Brennan said there was no evidence to support the woman’s claim Hastings messaged Harper, which could have been accepted as proof Hastings planned the killing. There was also no evidence before the court that Hastings had a cellphone or other device capable of receiving such a message.
“We are simply to take her at her word,” Brennan said.
Himmelman said there was no “air of reality” to Hastings’s intoxication claim.
Harper’s killing was “planned and deliberate… and motivated by jealousy,” Himmelman said.
Toews reserved his decision.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.
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