It was over in seconds.

A man on a longboard (a longer form of skateboard) glides beside a silver Ambassador taxicab in rush hour traffic on King St. E.

According to the Crown, the longboarder hits the cab with his hand, words are spoken or exchanged, and the cab veers into the man, running him over and causing fatal crushing injuries to the head.

The cab driver, Adib Ibrahim, is now on trial for the second-degree murder of 28-year-old Ralph Bissonnette on May 14, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.

In an opening overview of the evidence he expects to call, Crown prosecutor Hank Goody told a jury there was no reason, apart from the intent to kill or seriously injure, for the cab driver to swerve into Bissonnette, leaving him dead on the curb and the longboard snapped in half.

Goody alleges that there were no mechanical defects, visibility issues, traffic conditions or impairment due to drugs, alcohol or medical distress that contributed to the collision.

Both Ibrahim and Bissonnette were heading west on King St. E, approaching Jarvis St. at around 6 p.m., Goody told the jury. The collision is partially captured by the security video from a condo building between George St. and Jarvis. St.

Ibrahim was in the passing lane, Bissonnette was by the front passenger side of the cab straddling the passing and curb lanes, Goody said. They were travelling at about the same pace.

The jury will hear evidence that just prior to the cab swerving, Bissonnette struck the taxi one or more times with one or both of his hands, Goody said. There will also be evidence of words being exchanged between the two men or from one of them to the other, he said.

The tall longboarder would have been clearly visible to Ibrahim at the time of the collision, Goody said.

“Mr. Ibrahim neither stopped nor braked but continued to drive his vehicle forward…in the process running over the right side of Mr. Bissonnette’s body,” Goody said. The car came to a halt partially on the north curb.

The first police officer on the scene, Sgt. Alan Cakebread, testified that Bissonnette’s body was grey and looked as if it had been “deflated” and his head “deformed.” Ibrahim was arrested at the scene.

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“Mere seconds, ladies and gentlemen, are all it took for this encounter between Ralph Bissonnette on his longboard and Adib Ibrahim at the wheel of his taxi cab to end in Mr. Bissonnette’s death,” Goody said in his jury address. “But those seconds, the Crown will submit, were long enough for Mr. Bissonnette’s death to have been a murder.”

The trial continues.