Rhonda Homsombath was only 25 years old when she went out in Hamilton, Ontario, during the early morning hours of March 8, 2020. She was a mother to an eight-year-old daughter, and those who knew her remembered a young woman who was loving, caring and full of life. She had plans for her future and for her child’s future. There is no indication that Rhonda knew that, before the morning was over, she would become the innocent victim of violence apparently intended for someone else.
The evening had begun elsewhere. Rhonda was among people who had been at Zen Lounge on John Street South, where a memorial celebration was being held for Carel Douse, a Hamilton man who had been murdered in May 2019. After the gathering at Zen Lounge ended, people continued on to the Urban Lounge at 632 Barton Street East, an establishment operating in the basement behind Sam’s Tavern in Hamilton, Ontario.
It is important not to read too much into the fact that Rhonda had been at the memorial. I found no reliable evidence establishing that she was connected to Carel Douse’s murder, nor have police publicly said that the shooting later that morning was retaliation for Douse’s death. The memorial explains how some of the people came to be together that night, but it does not establish why the shooting occurred.
By the early morning hours, the Urban Lounge was crowded. Surveillance footage would later reveal just how crowded: Hamilton Police identified nearly 100 potential witnesses who may have been inside the establishment around the time everything went wrong.
Shortly after 5:00am, gunfire erupted inside the lounge.
According to the initial police reconstruction, a man entered the establishment and fired multiple shots. Four people were struck three men and one woman. Emergency responders rushed all four victims to hospital. Thirty-nine-year-old Jahmal Thomas of Brantford was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Rhonda initially survived her injuries, but shortly after 8:00am that morning, she too was pronounced dead. The other two victims, men aged 38 and 29, survived.
Rhonda’s death was especially difficult to understand because police could not initially establish a relationship among the four people who had been shot. As detectives began reconstructing what had happened, however, investigators developed a theory that would fundamentally change how Rhonda’s murder was viewed.
Police came to believe that Rhonda apparently wasn’t the intended target, but Jahmal Thomas likely was.
Nor, according to the information made public, were the two other men who were wounded. Reporting at the time described the three as innocent bystanders or collateral victims who had been caught in gunfire apparently directed toward Jahmal.
Nothing credible I found suggests that Rhonda was targeted or involved in whatever circumstances led someone to open fire that morning. She appears to have been a young mother who happened to be standing in a crowded room when someone else’s dispute turned deadly.
In the immediate aftermath, Hamilton Police released a description of the suspected shooter. Police described him as a black man with a dark complexion, possibly in his early 30s, approximately 5’10” tall and thin, with short braids. He was reportedly wearing dark jeans or pants and a tracksuit style zip up jacket. Police said he fled afterward in an unknown direction.
Initially, the investigation appeared to be focused on a single gunman.
That soon changed.
Once forensic investigators had finished examining the Urban Lounge and began processing the evidence collected there, Hamilton Police announced on March 11 that they could not rule out the possibility that additional shooters had been involved.
Months later, police went further.
By October 2020, investigators said the evidence had led them to believe that more than one firearm had been discharged during the shooting. When reporters asked who police believed had fired the different weapons, investigators declined to elaborate.
That detail is important, but it also needs to be treated cautiously. Evidence that more than one gun was fired doesn’t automatically mean two gunmen entered the lounge together. There are other possibilities, including someone returning fire. Police have never publicly provided enough information to determine exactly what happened, and identifying a specific scenario would go beyond the known evidence.
While investigators worked to understand the gunfire itself, they encountered another problem.
Witnesses weren’t talking.
That is particularly remarkable considering how many people appear to have been present. Police said surveillance footage showed nearly 100 potential witnesses inside the Urban Lounge. Yet immediately following the shooting, investigators said only one witness voluntarily came forward.
Detectives began identifying and tracking down people themselves. Within several days, approximately twenty interviews had been conducted, but investigators believed many more people knew something about what had happened. Police appealed directly to anyone who had been inside the lounge to come forward, while also asking nearby residents and businesses to examine security footage for anything suspicious between approximately 5:00 and 6:00 that morning.
Seven months later, investigators were still searching for answers.
And by then, they were particularly interested in one man.
Surveillance footage had captured someone police believed was a friend of Jahmal Thomas. Investigators believed the man had been with Jahmal earlier at Zen Lounge and had subsequently gone to the Urban Lounge.
Hamilton Police were careful about how they described him. He was being sought as a witness, not publicly identified as a suspect.
Police had apparently exhausted their attempts to determine who he was. In October 2020, they appealed publicly for the man to identify himself and speak with investigators, saying they believed he possessed information that was vital to the investigation.
What that information might have been was never publicly disclosed.
It raises one of the biggest unanswered questions surrounding the murders: Why did police believe Jahmal Thomas was being targeted?
I searched for an explanation involving an earlier shooting, personal dispute, threats, retaliation, gang conflict or another confrontation. I couldn’t find a reliable source in which Hamilton Police publicly identified the motive or explained why investigators believed someone wanted Jahmal dead.
There may be information about the motive that police have deliberately withheld.
There is also no responsible basis for assuming the shooting was connected to the Carel Douse memorial simply because Jahmal, Rhonda and others had been there earlier that night. By March 2020, arrests had already been made in Douse’s murder, and three people had been charged. More importantly, I found no statement from Hamilton Police establishing that Douse’s murder motivated the shooting at the Urban Lounge.
For Rhonda’s family, however, determining why someone wanted to kill Jahmal could help answer why Rhonda lost her life.
Rhonda’s sister, Ranny Homsombath, spoke publicly about the devastating loss. Friends remembered Rhonda as an amazing person. A fundraiser established following her death described her as loving and caring and sought to help provide for the future of the eight-year-old daughter she left behind.
That little girl went to bed with a mother on March 7, 2020.
By the following morning, her mother was gone.
Rhonda had been caught in violence that, according to everything investigators have publicly revealed, wasn’t directed toward her.
The number of potential witnesses makes the lack of resolution particularly difficult to comprehend. This wasn’t a shooting on an isolated road or inside an empty building. Nearly 100 potential witnesses were captured on surveillance footage. Two other shooting victims survived. Police recovered forensic evidence. Surveillance footage existed. Investigators conducted interviews and eventually identified a particular witness whom they believed possessed vital information.
Yet years passed without a publicly announced arrest for Rhonda’s murder.
I searched for later arrests, murder charges, trials and convictions under both Rhonda Homsombath’s and Jahmal Thomas’s names and found no reliable record indicating that anyone has subsequently been prosecuted for their deaths. I also couldn’t locate a current Hamilton Police cold-case profile explicitly confirming the investigation’s status as of 2026, so the most accurate wording is that no one appears to have been charged with their murders based on the publicly available record.
There are still enormous gaps in what the public knows.
Who wanted Jahmal Thomas dead? Why was he targeted? How many people fired guns inside the Urban Lounge? Who was the unidentified friend investigators believed could provide vital information? What did the two surviving shooting victims see? And perhaps most frustratingly, among nearly one hundred potential witnesses, how many people know exactly what happened?
Those questions matter because at the centre of this case is a woman who appears to have had nothing to do with whatever brought violence through the doors of the Urban Lounge.
Rhonda Homsombath was 25 years old. She was a daughter, a sister, a friend and, most importantly, the mother of an eight-year-old girl. Showing more about who Rhonda was, for 10 years she was also a caregiver to one of her best friends who suffered from epileptic seizures. She went out on an ordinary Saturday night and found herself inside a crowded lounge when someone opened fire. Police believe another man was the intended target and Rhonda was not. And it was her daughter that had to grow up without her.
And more than six years later, the publicly available record still does not provide the answer her family deserves:
Who killed Rhonda Homsombath?
If you have information on Marley’s case, please contact any of the following:
Hamilton Police Service – Major Crimes/Homicide Unit:
Detective Daniel Reid: 905-546-3825
Telephone: 905-546-4925 or 905-546-4772
Reference Case#: 20-561114
Crime Stoppers: 1-800-222-TIPS(8477)
Online at: https://www.canadiancrimestoppers.org/submit-a-tip/submit-a-tip
Crime Stoppers provides anonymous tipping
Sources: Hamilton Police Service; CHCH News; Global News; CityNews/The Canadian Press.
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