Hagersville man found guilty of second-degree murder

“Please hurry,” Joseph Tobicoe texted a friend on July 29, 2020, “I’m going to smash this guy with my guitar.”

About an hour and a half later, Tyler King, 30, Tobicoe’s distant cousin, was dead from a single blow to the head, landed by Tobicoe as he swung an electric guitar at the man.

From his Main Street apartment in Hagersville, Tobicoe texted a photo of the inert King on a couch, the man’s face bloodied.

“He kept calling me a pussy and I f___d up,” he wrote.

“Almost dead,” he said a few minutes later.

“Done. Ambulance on the way.”

But no ambulance was called.

Instead Tobicoe, who is now 39, set fire to King’s body and a couch before leaving the apartment, locking the door behind him.

After dousing the fire, King’s body was found by firefighters 70-80 per cent charred, killed by a single blow to the head from a blunt object.

Tobicoe’s lawyer, Jaime Stephenson said there was evidence Tobicoe was in a disassociative state, wandering around the Hagersville downtown. She argued that Tobicoe was guilty of manslaughter and not the first-degree murder charge he faced in a trial at the Cayuga courthouse earlier this week.

Testifying for himself, Tobicoe said he had fought with King after inviting him to come and drink with him. Tobicoe said he gave King money to go to the nearby liquor store, which took him a long time and, when King returned, he didn’t have the substantial leftover cash but went into the bathroom for about 20 minutes and came out “dopey” .

Tobicoe knew his cousin was a fentanyl user and, indeed, fentanyl, methamphetamine and cannabis was found during King’s autopsy.

The two fought about the missing money but calmed down. Later, Tobicoe said, he noticed more money was missing from his living room.

It was that provocation that caused him to lose his temper and swing his guitar at King, he said.

“I don’t remember doing anything with the guitar that night,” said a weeping Tobicoe on the witness stand in Superior Court.

“But after everything happened, I didn’t sleep for a long time because when I would close my eyes, I would see me swinging it.”

Assistant Crown attorney Chelsea LaPointe said Tobicoe’s own texts pointed to his intent to kill.

“There’s evidence of planning and deliberation in two texts,” LaPointe said.

“’I’m going to smash him with my guitar’ and then later saying ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody’ which implies he’s thinking about it.”

LaPointe said Tobicoe made a plan – albeit a simple one – and then carried it out.

“He thought about it for an hour and 24 minutes based on the text message to his friend. He was weighing the pros and cons.”

Justice James Ramsey said he didn’t buy much of Tobicoe’s story.

“I accept the accused had been drinking. I don’t accept that he blacked out. He remembers too many things.”

And, said the judge, he believed the talk of the missing money was a year afterthought: “It just sounded less sinister than killing in anger or over a petty insult.”

“The evidence convinces me the accused didn’t act in the heat of passion. He was angry and … he meant to cause death.”

Ramsey found Tobicoe guilty of second-degree murder.

“He meant to cause death.”

Tobicoe will remain in jail as a presentence report and a Gladue report are prepared before he faces sentencing.

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