Despite finding some of the circumstances \u201cvery suspicious,\u201d a judge has acquitted a man of all charges in the 2023 killing of an Edmonton drug dealer.<\/p>\n
Fred Kolybaba was found dead early Sept. 1, 2023, after firefighters responded to an arson fire in the basement of his northwest Edmonton home. The 69-year-old had been repeatedly stabbed and died of a deep slash wound to his jugular vein.<\/p>\n
Nicholas Alexander Brashko, who had been at Kolybaba\u2019s home buying Oxycodone the afternoon before, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and arson.<\/p>\n
After a trial, though, Court of King\u2019s Bench Justice John Henderson concluded<\/a> the Crown had failed to prove Brashko was the killer.<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Brashko told police that he did not kill the deceased,\u201d Henderson wrote<\/a>. \u201cHe told police that he left the deceased\u2019s residence within one or two hours of his arrival at 5 p.m. When I consider these statements in the context of all the evidence, including the circumstantial evidence, I am left with a reasonable doubt that his statement may be true.\u201d<\/p>\n Brashko was 44 at the time of his arrest and living in dire circumstances. When police searched his home after Kolybaba\u2019s murder, the utilities had been cut off and there was no heat, power or running water. Investigators also found a large quantity of silver, which Brashko said he purchased from Kolybaba, along with at least 20 empty pizza boxes.<\/p>\n Brashko admitted he visited Kolybaba\u2019s house to buy drugs the day before the murder. At 5:45 p.m. a friend of Kolybaba\u2019s saw Brashko inside during a brief stop at the front door. Cellphone records show Brashko also called Kolybaba around 8:07 p.m., with his phone connecting to a tower near Kolybaba\u2019s home.<\/p>\n Crown prosecutors Lucas Huyser-Wierenga and Jeffrey Zilkowsky theorized that Brashko killed Kolybaba sometime after the friend visited, then remained in the house until 12:10 a.m., when the home\u2019s security system registered the front door opening. Fire crews responded minutes later after Kolybaba\u2019s smoke detectors activated. They extinguished three small deliberately set fires in the basement.<\/p>\n Prosecutors claimed that after he left the house, Brashko walked toward a Shell gas station near the Kensington Bingo Hall, where a man was spotted on surveillance footage carrying two heavy bags. A cab driver testified he picked up a man in the area around that time and dropped him at a church near Brashko\u2019s home. The driver said the man was carrying bags which made a \u201cclinking\u201d sound when he loaded them into the car.<\/p>\n Henderson said the Crown\u2019s theory \u2014 that Brashko killed Kolybaba, then stole his collection of silver coins \u2014 was \u201cdangerously seductive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no doubt that the circumstances disclosed in the evidence are clearly very suspicious,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Crown theory is based on a chain of established facts, which the Crown submits gives rise to an inference that Mr. Brashko is guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the judge found the circumstances were not proof of Brashko\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n While concluding Kolybaba was clearly slain, Henderson was left with a reasonable doubt about the identity of the killer. He said the security footage from the Shell station and bingo hall do not clearly show the man\u2019s face, and the man in the video is wearing different clothing than Brashko was seen wearing earlier in the day.<\/p>\n Prosecutors argued Brashko had changed clothes after stabbing Kolybaba, but no blood soaked clothes were ever found in either man\u2019s home. The man in the Shell station video is also wearing footwear similar to what Brashko was wearing earlier in the day, despite no blood stained shoes being found anywhere in Brashko\u2019s home.<\/p>\n While the Crown argued it would be unusual for a man with a large quantity of valuable silver to be living in a home with no utilities, Henderson said there was evidence Brashko bought and sold the precious metal in the lead-up to Kolybaba\u2019s murder. In particular, banking records confirmed Brashko received several large cash transfers after his mother\u2019s death, which he claims he used to purchase silver.<\/p>\n Henderson noted that, while they weren\u2019t required for the Crown to prove its case, police never found a murder weapon, and the bags seen in the Shell surveillance footage were never located. Nor was Kolybaba\u2019s blood or DNA found in Brashko\u2019s home, the judge said.<\/p>\n Taken as a whole, the Crown\u2019s case was too weak to ground a conviction, Henderson concluded.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be too dangerous to convict on the totality of the evidence presented,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n According to the decision, Brashko was \u201cseriously\u201d injured and hospitalized after his initial arrest by police Sept. 4, 2023. He was released and rearrested the following February.<\/p>\n Anna Konye, Brashko\u2019s lawyer, declined to comment.<\/p>\n jwakefield@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n x.com\/jonnywakefield <\/a><\/p>\n @jonnywakefield.bsky.social<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite finding some of the circumstances \u201cvery suspicious,\u201d a judge has acquitted a man of all charges in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[29134,52,29132,29133,29131],"class_list":["post-70465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-circumstances","tag-edmonton","tag-fred-kolybaba","tag-john-henderson","tag-nicholas-alexander-brashko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}