Man found guilty in Ottawa librarian's 2018 murder

Tyler Hikoalok, 18, is charged in the beating death of Elisabeth Salm, makes his first appearance in an Ottawa courtroom on Monday, May 28, 2018. (Lauren Foster-MacLeod)

An Ottawa jury has found Tyler Hikoalok guilty of first-degree murder in the 2018 death of an Ottawa church librarian.

The jury delivered the guilty verdict on Sunday afternoon, two days after beginning deliberations at the Ottawa Courthouse.

Elisabeth Salm, 59, was found badly beaten on the ground at the back of the Christian Science Reading Room on Laurier Avenue on May 24, 2018. Salm later died in hospital.

Hikoalok, who was 18 at the time, was arrested in May 2018.

The 22-year-old had pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder at the start of the trial in September.

During victim impact statements, Salm's family held yellow flowers in the courtroom.

"My beautiful sister was one of the kindest, most caring human beings you could ever meet," Salm's brother told the court.

"This yellow flower represents the sunshine that she was to everybody who knew her."

Salm's widower Lyle Young told the court, "I've never felt anything other than compassion regarding this case. I seem to be incapable of feeling bitterness and hate, even in the face of a heinous crime."

"For me, this feeling of compassion flows from the deepest sense of who I am," Young said Sunday afternoon.

Young also addressed Hikoalok, who sat in the prisoner's box with his head bowed.

"I would like to challenge you to see which of us can affect the other more; you affecting me by killing my wife or my effect on you by practising forgiveness."

Hikoalok briefly apologized before being formally sentenced for killing Salm.

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

Justice Anne London-Weinstein presided over the trial. 

The Christian Science Reading Room is a bookstore and a quiet place for study and prayer, located in downtown Ottawa.