His friends said you could always tell when Etop “Jon” Ituen was approaching: He’d be on his e-scooter with a ghetto blaster blaring his favourite Christian tunes.
That innocent love of the gospel would get him killed: His neighbour Christopher Wood, 69, pleaded guilty this week to stabbing him 42 times because, court was told, the radio noise emanating from Ituen’s balcony filled him with rage and left him feeling “murderous.”
Ituen, 61, died of multiple fatal stab wounds to his head and neck in the rear yard of 126 Coxwell Ave.
Wood and Ituen lived across the street from each other in supportive housing for people with mental disabilities on Coxwell. According to the agreed statement of facts, Wood had visited the rear of Ituen’s building at least twice on July 25, 2023, and complained to another neighbour about the loud gospel sermons coming from the radio.
Music was ‘triggering great rage,’ court told
Wood wrote his social worker on July 26, 2023, that he was in a “terrible situation” because of the noise coming from the balcony of Unit 201 across the road.
“It is triggering great anxiety and panic in my psyche,” he warned in a letter to Colletta Johnson presented to the court. “It is also triggering great rage, but yet again, as has happened many times in my life, I am being victimized.”
“I have developed very suicidal, and conversely, murderous feelings. I do not know what to do.”
Incident escalated quickly
By the time she received his letter the next day, the statement said, Wood had already embarked on a deadly plan of action.
On the morning of July 27, 2023, Toronto Police received reports of a man being stabbed behind 126 Coxwell. Just four minutes after Wood was spotted entering the rear yard, Ituen was lying in a pool of blood, a red knife at his side. The statement said Wood, covered in blood, was standing over him. The knife’s sheath was found in the pocket of his shorts.
“Mr. Wood admits that he caused Mr. Ituen’s death by stabbing him repeatedly with a knife,” the agreed statement said. “It is also agreed that Mr. Wood intended to cause Mr. Ituen’s death or intended to cause him bodily harm that he knew was likely to cause death and was reckless as to whether death ensued.”
Ituen was ‘truly an angel’
At his funeral — the service is still online — his family said Ituen, the youngest of eight children, was born in Nigeria and came to Canada as a young man who loved sports and running. His passion then became cooking and everyone had stories about his food. The support worker at his building told mourners Ituen would make meals for his neighbours so they would have something ready to eat when they got home.
“He was one of the kindest souls you will ever meet,” another friend said. “He was truly an angel who walks on this Earth.”
It’s the second case this month in the downtown courthouse involving drastic measures allegedly taken to deal with bitter neighbourly disputes in the big city. A jury is deliberating whether Reeyaz Habib was killed because he complained too often about the odours from his Liberty Village neighbour’s charcoal barbecue.
Now a man with apparent mental-health challenges faces life in prison for killing a kind, God-fearing gentleman over his loud radio.
Another sign of how far we’ve fallen from “Toronto the Good.”
