Martin: Addiction lead to a very tragic outcome in recent Calgary case

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It will be up to jurors to decide who killed Calgarian Chad Kowalchuk and what their motivation for doing so was.

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But as the lawyer for one of his accused murderers accurately noted in his final submissions this week, Kowalchuk, like the parade of witnesses who testified in the trial and the suspects themselves, was a broken human being.

Kowalchuk, from all exterior views, was a successful Calgarian, owning a home in what realtors described as the sought-after neighborhood of Douglasdale.

But a view inside the interior of his residence showed a different picture, where Kowalchuk kept his drugs locked in a safe in his heavily fortified bedroom, so the shady characters he allowed to live under his roof wouldn’t have access.

It was the contents of that safe, which those who planned the crime believed also contained up to $30,000 cash, that ultimately led to Kowalchuk’s violent and tragic demise.

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Jurors were to be given final legal instructions Thursday by Justice Lisa Silver in the trial of the men accused of taking part in Kowalchuk’s beating death, Justin Boucher, Robert Sims and Ronald Abraham.

All three men are accused of first-degree murder in the killing, either because it was planned, or the victim was killed during the course of an unlawful confinement.

The lifeless and bound body of Kowalchuk, 53, was discovered by firefighters reporting to an early morning blaze at the residence on Feb. 18, 2022, five days after he was killed.

Defence counsel Dale Fedorchuk, who acted for Abraham, pointed out Kowalchuk, just like his client and the other players in this sordid tale, was a flawed individual.

One of the alleged motives raised by the Crown at the beginning of the trial of the three accused was a suggestion, or rumour that Kowalchuk was a pedophile.

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In fact, the sister of Boucher, who said her brother confessed to playing a role in the killing, testified he told her the victim was having sexual relations with an 11-year-old girl.

Fedorchuk fairly noted there was no truth to the suggestion Kowalchuk engaged in such activity, but it would certainly act as a strong motive in some circles to have him killed.

In the law-abiding portion of society pedophiles are correctly shunned and imprisoned for their misdeeds.

But in the drug and criminal subculture which often engages in street justice, violent retribution is often the end result.

That’s where the broken people who Kowalchuk ended up dealing with, came from.

One of those was Justin Urban, who was living for free in the victim’s basement.

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Urban, who was handed a life sentence without parole for a minimum 16 years earlier this year when he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder, at the very least played a major role in the killing.

Urban refused to testify in the trial of his once three co-accused, leaving jurors unclear on what he knew about the tragic death.

But he certainly fit into the broken-person category Fedorchuk referred to when he made his submissions to the jury.

“This trial is a story about broken people,” the lawyer said.

“Drugs and criminal activity broke most of the people in this trial,” he said, adding that applied as much to the three men before the court as Kowalchuk and the witnesses who testified in the lengthy case.

It’s a place from which most Calgarians steer carefully clear. One where addiction can lead to all sorts of horrible, horrible consequences.

It plays out every day in our courts. Thankfully rarely as tragically as in the case of Chad Kowalchuk.

Violence is part of the everyday reality of those living in that subculture, but that doesn’t make it right.

As Fedorchuk rightfully pointed out to jurors in his closing remarks: “Mr. Kowalchuk did not deserve to die.”

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