‘I feel like I have been broken’: Tears follow Ibey’s guilty verdict

Cheers erupted from Savanna Pikuyak’s family, but only for a moment, after her killer was found guilty of first-degree murder in an Ottawa courtroom Tuesday.

The cheers quickly turned to tears and hugs. For her family and supporters, the verdict ended three weeks spent listening to the agonizing details of Savanna Pikuyak’s death on Sept. 11, 2022.

Her mother, Sheba Pikuyak, wailed as she left the courtroom after the jury had been dismissed. She and Savanna Pikuyak’s father had travelled more than 2,500 kilometres from Sanirajak to face their 22-year-old daughter’s killer, Nikolas Ibey, 35.

“I feel like I have been broken. I feel like all of the colours have been stripped from me. I only see black and white,” Savanna’s sister, Geneva Pikuyak, said in her victim impact statement.

Savanna was “a bright, silly soul. She brought out the colours,” she said. Her sister had a heart murmur, she said, and was easily scared.

“I hope she is no longer afraid,” Geneva Pikuyak said.

Savanna Pikuyak, shown in an undated photo. (Photo courtesy of Sheba Pikuyak)

Crown prosecutor Sonia Beauchamp also wiped away tears after the verdict was read.

When the judge asked Ibey if he had anything to say after the verdict was read, Ibey simply answered: “No.”

At the end of a trial that lasted three weeks, it took a little over three hours for the jury to find Ibey guilty of first-degree murder.

Ibey pleaded guilty to second-degree murder at the opening of the trial on Nov. 12. However, the Crown sought a first-degree murder conviction based on circumstances surrounding her death.

In his instructions to the jury Tuesday, Justice Robert Maranger reminded them that Ibey’s lawyer conceded that his client murdered Pikuyak.

In deciding whether Ibey was guilty of first- or second-degree murder, jurors had to consider if there was “a reasonable inference” that Ibey had also sexually assaulted or unlawfully confined Pikuyak.

Maranger said that if they found either of those other crimes coincided with Pikuyak’s murder, the verdict must be first-degree murder.

Only the guilty ruling was read out by the jury, without explanation for its decision.

Just four days before her death, Pikuyak had moved to Ottawa from Sanirajak to study nursing at Algonquin College.

She moved into Ibey’s home about two kilometres south of the college after answering a Facebook post advertising rooms for rent.

As evidence presented during the trial, the jury examined photographs of the bloody scene police found inside Ibey’s home. They reviewed hours of text messages Ibey exchanged with escorts in an alcohol and cocaine-fueled frenzy seeking sex.

They also learned that sometime after 3 a.m. on Sept. 11, Ibey broke into Pikuyak’s room, beat her and sexually assaulted her, ultimately killing her by asphyxiation.

A first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years.