Husbands says he feared for his life before Eaton Centre shooting
Posted November 25, 2014 12:56 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The man who killed two people in a crowded downtown food court says he feared for his life in the run-up to the shooting.
Christopher Husbands says he had been threatened, and he believed the threats.
Husbands, 25, opened fire at the Eaton Centre in June 2012.
One of the men he shot and killed was Nixon Nirmalendran, who had taken part in a near-fatal stabbing attack on Husbands several months before the mall shooting.
Testifying in his own defence, Husbands said he knew Nirmalendran to be a violent gun owner.
Husbands has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, saying the mall shooting was unplanned.
Court has heard how, in February 2012, a group of men attacked Husbands in an apartment, leaving him in a pool of blood.
Husbands has said he had no idea what prompted the attack but said he believed the men wanted to kill him.
He testified he was convinced his attackers would try to finish the job.
“I thought their intention was to kill me,” he told Ontario Superior Court on Tuesday.
“They’d do whatever they have to do to shut me up. I was worried for my life.”
Husbands and Nirmalendran, 22, had known each other for years and had, at one point, become friends.
But the relationship deteriorated, Husbands testified.
“At one point, Nixon was a very nice guy. He just went from getting bullied to not wanting to get bullied so bad that he became very aggressive,” Husbands told the jury.
“He just needed to let everyone know ‘I have a gun and I can shoot that gun’.”
Husbands said he tried to distance himself after Nirmalendran admitted to shooting and killing a man in 2008 but was afraid to just cut him off completely.
Nor did he tell police that Nirmalendran had admitted the shooting.
“You don’t talk,” he told the jury.
Following the February 2012 stabbing, Husbands said he began looking to carry a gun for protection.
“I just wanted to be safe,” he said.
Before the Eaton Centre shooting, court heard, he had only fired a weapon a few times — at a gun range.
He also tried to reach out to Nirmalendran through intermediaries to try to sort matters out.
Nirmalendran was jailed from December 2009 until days before the attack on Husbands in February 2012.
