A jury found Ian Albert Ohab guilty of second-degree murder in the 2016 death of Melissa Cooper Thursday afternoon with 10 of the 12 jurors recommending he be denied any chance of parole for the maximum 25 years.

Members of Cooper’s family, who attended the whole trial, let out low exclamations of “yes” and wiped away tears in a Toronto courtroom after the jury read out the verdict after nearly nine hours of deliberating.

Ohab, 41, had earlier admitted to dismembering Cooper’s body and scattering her remains around the city. Only part of Cooper’s torso and her right arm were ever found, one behind a butcher on Broadview Ave., the other at a North York recycling plant.

After the verdict, Cooper’s stepfather Alan Ball said the jury made the right decision. “I believe they got a predator, a monster, off the streets,” he said. “I’m not happy or anything like that. He’s still going to be alive and my stepdaughter is dead.”

The trial focused on Cooper’s addictions — cited as the reason she went to the public housing apartment block where she encountered Ohab — but Ball said she was also a caring friend to many people who lived in that complex, visiting some regularly just to check on them.

“She was a person. A very good person ... she wasn’t afraid of people, she didn’t judge people,” he said. “If she thought you had a good heart she was your friend.”

Ball, who knew Cooper since she was a baby, says her loss has been tough for many of her friends and family — but particularly for her mother, Michelle Ball, who considered Cooper her best friend.

“It’s a long road,” he said.

Cooper, 30, was reported missing on April 15, 2016, by her mother when she didn’t come to her grandmother’s house for a Friday-night dinner. Her mother went to Cooper’s apartment and found only her hungry cat. Cooper’s phone, which she used constantly, was off, with the last contact made at 1:45 a.m. that day.

Cooper visited a friend at 220 Oak St., one of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s most troubled highrises, just after midnight on April 15. The Crown argued she met Ohab by chance on an elevator as she was looking to buy some crack cocaine and he lured her into his apartment. Cooper’s friend testified he believed she was going to buy the crack cocaine and bring it back for them to use together. When she did not return he said he went looking for her.

Cooper was still in Ohab’s apartment — the last surveillance video of Cooper shows her and Ohab getting off the elevator and heading toward Ohab’s 23rd-floor apartment at 1:35 a.m.

Once in the apartment, the Crown argued Ohab attacked Cooper and killed her for an unknown reason. Bruising that could indicate blunt force trauma was found on her torso, the Crown said, and surveillance video shows Ohab leaving the apartment shortly after wearing different clothing. He locked the door behind him.

But Ohab denied killing Cooper. He said they smoked crack cocaine together and then he went to buy himself some heroin. Cooper was alive before he took the heroin, he said, but when he woke up around 8 or 9 a.m. she was dead and there was vomit everywhere. He said he believed she had overdosed.

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Ohab said his girlfriend had overdosed earlier that year in the apartment and he had had a poor experience with the authorities. He said rumours were going around the building that he had killed his girlfriend, and so he panicked over the thought Cooper’s body would be found in his apartment. He said he considered dumping her body in the stairwell but it was too far from his apartment. Instead, he purchased a saw and used it to dismember Cooper’s body — a process he graphically described to the jury.

Ohab’s lawyer, Philip Klumak, urged the jury to consider Ohab’s circumstances when deciding whether his account is credible.

“How can you say that it is unreasonable for a heroin addict, after losing his spouse, going through what he did after that, to come up with what he sees as the only way to remove himself from the situation. It was not an unreasonable situation for him,” he said.

Cooper’s cause of death could not be determined. Crown prosecutor Bev Richards argued Ohab deliberately disposed of Cooper’s body to conceal how she died.

“He dismembered her body, ensured it was completely devoid of all blood and scattered her body parts in a calculated and measured attempt to conceal her murder,” she said.

Richards said if Cooper’s head was found, for example, a forensic pathologist might be able to determine her cause of death.

Ohab was initially on trial for first-degree murder but that charge was downgraded to second-degree murder due to a lack of evidence about a sexual assault or forcible confinement.

The jury did not hear that Ohab had pleaded guilty in 2014 to a knifepoint forcible confinement of a woman for two days in his apartment during which he attempted to get money from her and assaulted her.

Ohab’s lawyer Klumak said he had no comment after the verdict.

Ohab’s sentencing hearing was set for March 26.