Amz's Blog

Nov 20, 2008 07:38 PM
Betsy Powell Courts Bureau
Arber "Benny" Krasniqi says he stabbed Jordan Ormonde in the neck in a Greek restaurant on the Danforth to save himself but he didn't mean to kill the 24-year-old.
"This big guy grabbed me and slapped me across the face. I couldn't breathe," Krasniqi testified today before a jury at his second-degree murder trial. Ormonde was upset, Krasniqi said, because he had danced with Ormonde's girlfriend.
With Ormonde holding him in the air, Krasniqi said he believed he was "going to die" so he grabbed a knife out of the front pocket of this jeans and started swinging it, waving his arms to demonstrate.
"What are you going to do when a guy double your size grabs you?" he said under questioning by his lawyer, James Silver. Ormonde was about 300 pounds and Krasniqi, 34, 130 pounds at the time.
Krasniqi said he was "shocked" when Ormonde's blood started spurting all over him - the wound had severed his carotid artery and jugular - and then ran out the front door with his friend, knife still in hand and Ormonde's friends in pursuit.
The defence opened its case today after the Crown called more than a dozen witnesses, most of them having attended the same birthday party as Ormonde, on April 22, 2007. All portrayed Krasniqi as the aggressor and none saw Ormonde, who was unarmed, show any aggression toward Krasniqi.
But Krasniqi, who is Albanian, said he encountered a hostile atmosphere in Kokkino "as soon as I came in," receiving dirty looks from waiter Loukas Pappas - "maybe he didn't like my big ears" - and then from some members of Ormonde's group of birthday celebrants.
"They didn't like us being there," said Krasniqi, adding later he felt they were looking at him and the other two men he was with as "animals."
Prosecutor Ann Morgan suggested otherwise.
"The Greek people had no problem with you at all," Morgan said. "The only person who has a problem with being an Albanian is you."
"No," responded the father of two. He came to Canada from Kosovo in 1999 and worked as a carpet installer until his arrest. He testified he has been convicted of assault and was sentenced to seven days in jail and one year's probation.
Before going to Kokkino, Krasniqi said he had drinks at another bar with a man named Sam, he didn't know his last name, who works in construction. They left the first bar and walked to Sam's truck and Krasniqi says he asked him if he could have one of the knives used to cut carpets.
"I told him it's a nice knife." Krasniqi gave the jury an animated and detailed explanation of how to install carpet, using the microphone on the witness stand to demonstrate.
After the stabbing, Toronto police released a photo of Krasniqi, who said he was hiding out in a Kingston Road motel before going to Montreal and then New York.
"Why did you flee the country?" Morgan asked.
"Everyone was his friends," he said. "I didn't know what to do. I stay I just killed somebody - what's going to happen? I'll be in jail all my life." He said he had two black eyes as a result of the barroom altercation.
When Morgan asked if he meant to kill Ormonde, he said no, but agreed with her statement "you thought it was me or him."
Morgan also pressed Krasniqi on why the two men he was with that night haven't stepped forward to corroborate "your side of the story."
Krasniqi replied he hasn't been able to locate them.
After spending some time in New York, he went to Florida but returned to Manhattan and was planning to surrender to police back in Toronto, Krasniqi testified.
Before that could happen, two Toronto women in Manhattan recognized him and alerted police when they returned home. U.S. Marshals arrested him there July 18, 2007.



Summary of story:
Well there was this man named Arber Krasniqi. He was in a restaruant and this man nasmed Ormonde comes out of nowhere and starts choking him. Then Arber gets too aggressive and takes his knife, and stabs Ormonde right in the side of the neck. Arber knew that the reason Ormonde came up too him like that was because Arber danced with Ormande's girlfriend. Now the part that was suprising too ME was that Arber ran out of the restraunt with Ormande"s friends behind him. Another thing was, this was Arber's SECOND criminal offense. Though, Arber fought back with the truth but it was still not good enough. Arber said that there was apparently Ormonde's birthday going on. And Arber was Albanian. Arber was trying to say that the Greeks from Ormande's party didn't like him. He recalls the waiters and the party members giving him dirty looks. (this was before Arber stabbed Ormande). After the stabbing, Arber tried to flee the country from places like New York and Montreal. Police found him on the sideroade and arrested him on July 18th 2007


Questions:

Question 1: Will this incident inflict with Canada? Can it change the economy in anyway?

Question 2: Have any of you had any experience with this kind of situation. Similiar?

Question 3: Do you think that the government should put SOME kind of law aggainst people who already had some criminal offense?