Peter Hughes said he freaked out when he saw his friends’ Jason and Tosha Hubler’s rented Bridgeland house on the television news in connection with a homicide.
“I started having a panic attack, because I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know what to do, so I phoned my boss,” Hughes testified on Tuesday, when asked about that day, Feb. 5, 2009. “I needed something to calm me down. He said to call the police.”
Hughes said he received a phone call from Tosha Hubler right after he spoke to his boss, and she told him they had been arrested at gunpoint near Banff.
He called the police right after that.
Jason Hubler, 36, and his wife Tosha Hubler, 31, are on trial for first-degree murder in connection with the death of Rino (Ray) Johnson, 77, on Jan. 30, 2009.
The Hublers are also accused of interfering with a human body, which was found stuffed into a wooden trunk in a southeast industrial area the following day.
Court heard previously that Johnson was a regular vendor at Hillhurst Sunnyside flea market, where he had sold tools and other household goods for 15 years. He went to the Hublers that day in answer to an online ad.
Hughes told Crown prosecutor Frances Turner he had seen the trunk, both at homes in Bridlewood and on 7th Street in Bridgeland, where the Hublers had lived. He said he saw it in Jason’s bedroom in the Bridgeland home.
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The witness said in the early afternoon of Jan. 30, the Hublers arrived at his home with a new GMC Sierra truck, which he later identified from pictures as the same one owned by Johnson.
Hughes said Jason was very proud of the vehicle and showed him some of the features, including satellite radio and an On-Star system.
He said he had been told several times over the previous month or so by Jason that he would be purchasing a truck from a friend Al, and said that was where he finally got the vehicle.
Hughes said a few days later that Jason Hubler told him he might have hit somebody with his Cavalier car near the Shamrock Hotel, not far from where Johnson’s body was discovered by a homeless man.
The next day, he said, Tosha told him much the same story: that they thought they hit somebody and it felt like a speed bump.
The witness also said he purchased a Taser gun from Jason Hubler that week and paid him $100.
“I thought it would be cool at the time,” he said.
When asked by police about the Taser, he lied twice to them about any knowledge of the illegal weapon. That night, he said, he put the weapon in a bag and smashed it, then scattered the pieces while walking over a 10-to-20 block area.
When asked under cross-examination by Tosha Hubler’s lawyer Allan Fay, Hughes said he could not recall being phoned and told by Jason Hubler that the Taser had been used in the death of a person.
“I don’t recall that,” he answered.
Mike Mooney, Johnson’s close friend who regularly attended garage and estate sales with Johnson for several years, said they had coffee after attending a sale in the northwest community of Valley Ridge and parted ways about noon.
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