A mistrial has been declared in the first-degree murder trial of man accused of stabbing a Toronto cancer researcher to death in the city’s downtown core in 2015.
Thirty-nine-year-old Mark Ernsting was fatally stabbed outside a home on McGill Street, near Yonge and Gerrard streets, at around 9:30 p.m. on the night of Dec. 15, 2015.
At the time of the incident, police said Ernsting, who was a biomedical engineer at the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research and adjunct professor at Ryerson University, was out for an evening walk near his home when he was stabbed multiple times.
The suspect in the homicide, identified as 21-year-old Calvin Michael Nimoh, was arrested near Summerhill Avenue and Yonge Street later that night.
On the first day of the trial Tuesday, Crown attorney Michael Cantlon told the court that the force of the stabbing resulted in the blade of the knife used in the homicide breaking off from the handle and lodging itself into the victim’s head.
At the time of his arrest, Cantlon said Nimoh was in possession of the handle of a knife with no blade attached.
Blood detected on the item matched Ernsting’s, Cantlon said.
Hours before the deadly stabbing, Cantlon said that the accused had robbed and stabbed a 65-year-old woman, who testified in court on Tuesday.
She said her attacker pulled her toward him, punched her, and didn’t say one word throughout the entire incident. She said she later learned that she had not in fact been punched but stabbed twice.
Nimoh’s brief trial ended in a mistrial on Wednesday after false information was introduced to the jury.
The court heard that the researched information was done “external” to the trial process and the decision for the mistrial was agreed to by both the Crown and the defence.
A new trial is expected to start later this week and selection for a new jury will begin this afternoon.
With files from CTV News Toronto's Tamara Cherry
