ManitobaJadar Morrison, 22, has been found guilty of manslaughter for his role in the fatal beating last year of a man inside a downtown Winnipeg apartment building.’A collective deployment of extensive violence [was conducted] upon Mr. Harper’: Judge Denis GuénetteCBC News · Posted: Sep 19, 2025 11:51 AM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours agoJadar Morrison, 22, has been found guilty of manslaughter in the death of River Harper, 19. (Trevor Brine/CBC)Jadar Morrison, 22, has been found guilty of manslaughter for his role in the fatal beating last year of a man inside a downtown Winnipeg apartment building.”River Harper was 19 years old when his life was taken away, over a bottle of alcohol and an electronic tablet,” says the written decision by provincial court Judge Denis Guénette, delivered Sept. 11.The two people who last saw Harper alive on the night of Feb. 6, 2024, were Morrison and Jrayden Monias, court documents say. Both were identified as appearing in numerous surveillance videos.Morrison was arrested Feb. 23, in Winnipeg. Monias, now 23, was arrested in Island Lake, a community about 460 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, on Feb. 26, 2024. He later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.Morrison chose to take his case to trial but didn’t testify. His defence team argued he was not responsible for the fatal blows.River Harper was beaten to death inside the 14th-floor suite of his apartment building in February 2024. (Google Street View)However, Guénette cited “principles of collective responsibility” from other cases where an assault results in death. All participants can be found guilty of manslaughter “regardless of which particular offender delivered the specifically fatal strike,” he wrote.”In law, the blow of one is the blow of them all.”What happened inside the apartment has been determined through agreed statements of fact from the Crown and defence, while other evidence came from the forensic pathologist who did the autopsy and surveillance video.The latter doesn’t show the actual assault, which happened in two stages — one lasting 20 minutes and the other two minutes — when everyone was inside Harper’s suite. But it does provide a documented progression of Harper’s condition, the judgment says.They enter the 14th-floor suite at 9:59 p.m., and at 10:19 p.m., Morrison and Monias leave and go into a nearby convenience store.Harper is seen exiting his apartment into the hallway. Blood is seen on his face below his nose, his T-shirt is torn in two places and he is “clearly unbalanced and unsteady the entire time … swaying and struggling to unsuccessfully light a cigarette,” the judgment says.At 10:37 p.m., Morrison and Monias are back at the apartment before leaving again at 10:40 p.m.Around 11:08 p.m., Harper comes into the hallway again, his face more bloodied and shirt more torn. He leans on the walls, moving himself forward by sliding against them.He eventually completely loses balance and falls backward. After lying motionless for some time, he pushes a hand against the wall and rolls onto his stomach before all movement ceases at 11:13 p.m.Harper died from acute brain trauma, says the forensics report, which also noted a fracture to the ribs and 22 blunt-force injuries on the body.The agreed statements say the men were drinking vodka and Morrison went to a bedroom, where he put on earbuds to listen to music on his tablet.When he took them out, he heard Monias and Harper talking aggressively, with Harper saying something about “having shooters.” Believing it was a gun threat, Morrison and Monias decided to leave.Morrison reached for the vodka bottle, but Harper knocked him away, so Morrison punched Harper once in the face, court documents say. Monias tackled Harper to the ground. Morrison said he never touched Harper again, while Monias delivered punches and kicks.With Harper down, Morrison grabbed the vodka bottle. He and Monias left and went to the convenience store, but Morrison realized he left his tablet in the apartment, so they returned, the documents say.Morrison saw Harper cleaning up and asked where the tablet was, but Harper only shrugged. While checking the bedroom, Morrison heard a commotion in the living room and saw Monias standing over Harper, the documents say.Morrison was still looking for the device when Monias yelled that he found it. As the men left again, Monias kicked Harper hard in the head, the documents say.The defence raised the possibility that Harper’s fatal head injury occurred when the back of his head hit the floor when he fell in the hallway, and that he was unsteady earlier because he was drunk.Guénette disagreed, noting Morrison’s evidence that the men only had two to three ounces each, and there was no video evidence of impairment when they all arrived at 10 p.m.”It was Mr. Harper’s serious fatal head injuries which caused him to collapse, and not the collapse which caused his fatal head injury,” Guénette wrote.Even if Morrison did not assault Harper when the men returned to the apartment, he laid the foundation for the additional attack by bringing Monias back, Guénette wrote.The defence had argued the two stages of assault should be separate events, but Guénette called that “nonsensical.””Mr. Morrison took no reasonable steps to neutralize or cancel out the violence which he himself had initiated during stage one. He did nothing to prevent what happened during stage two before it happened, and nothing to neutralize or cancel out the stage two violence as it was happening — despite clearly knowing it was happening,” the judge wrote.Guénette cited police photos from the scene, which showed the suite in disarray, with damaged and broken furnishings and widespread blood trails and splatter on the walls, as evidence of “a collective deployment of extensive violence upon Mr. Harper.”Sentencing for both men will happen at a later date.
Man found guilty in beating death of River Harper in Winnipeg apartment building
