Emotions run high at accused cabbie killer's arraignment
Emotions were running high at the Dartmouth, N.S., courthouse Friday as the young man accused of killing cabbie Sergei Kostin last year was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge.
Chaze Lamar Thompson, 20, of Dartmouth, appeared briefly and was also arraigned on a number of other charges arising out of a separate incident in 2008.
He was ordered to appear in Nova Scotia Supreme Court on Feb. 22 to answer to the murder charge.
The waiting room at the courthouse was filled with friends and family of the accused on one side and co-workers of Kostin, a Ukrainian immigrant who worked for Bob's Taxi for about 10 years, on the other.
A woman believed to be a close relative of Thompson's yelled and swung a large purse at a television cameraman on her way into the courtroom. After the arraignment, she had to be helped out of the courtroom by supporters.
The heightened emotion led sheriff's officers, who had not set up a metal detector, to call in reinforcements to beef up security.
Halifax Regional Police announced the murder charge on Thursday, nearly a year after Kostin disappeared while picking up a fare on the afternoon of Jan. 17, 2009. Thompson has been in jail since February 2009 on unrelated charges.
For cabbies like Olag Monet, it's been a long, anxious year of waiting to hear of an arrest.
"Everybody [is] concerned that now it can happen any time," Monet told reporters at the courthouse. "It don't have to be nighttime; it can be daytime, morning."
Kostin, 40, picked up his last passenger on Gaston Road in Dartmouth on Jan. 17, 2009. His burned-out taxi was found three days later in North Preston. His body was discovered in some brush on April 1, about a kilometre from where the cab was found.
Police have not said how Kostin died.
Kostin had no family in the Halifax region; his wife and other relatives live in his native Ukraine.
"He was constantly working," said Monet. "He didn't take much time for break."
Thompson was arrested in connection with a violent robbery at a video store in Dartmouth on Feb. 6, 2009, just weeks after Kostin disappeared.