It was the day slo-pitch in Barrhaven turned ugly, when scoring a run for an out-of-control runner meant bowling over the catcher at home plate, leaving her with permanent injuries, according to a $1-million lawsuit against the baserunner and a slo-pitch league.
In a statement of claim against Robert Lambert and the Barrhaven Mixed Slo-Pitch League, Sharlene Bagshaw charges that the player “carelessly and recklessly placed a greater importance on scoring a run in a recreational game than he did on the plaintiff’s safety and health.”
The mixed league is non-competitive and, unlike baseball or softball, players don’t score runs by touching home plate, but rather by crossing a “safety line” off to the side. The safety-line rule is specifically designed to avoid collisions between the catcher and baserunners.
But, the claim alleges, Lambert instead ran straight at Bagshaw, who was standing on home plate in what she thought was “a position of safety” during a game on June 26, 2015. Bagshaw was knocked backward in the air, with her back hitting the ground first, then the back of her head twice, causing severe injuries, according to the claim.
The allegations of negligence against Lambert include:
He engaged in violent reckless conduct against a woman;
He engaged in an aggressive manner inappropriate for co-ed slo-pitch;
He knew or ought to have known that contact was prohibited;
And he had no control over himself and was impaired by the use of drugs and/or alcohol.
As a result of the home-plate collision, Bagshaw, according to the claim, suffers from a long list of serious and permanent injuries, including: concussion, whiplash, dizziness, headaches, exhaustion, noise sensitivity, loss of balance, problems concentrating, memory loss, and neck and back pain.
The collision has left her unable to work and the claim notes that her enjoyment of life will suffer indefinitely.
Bagshaw has also named the Barrhaven slo-pitch league as a defendant in the lawsuit, which claims the league failed to ensure the rules of play, and the safety of the plaintiff, and that it failed to properly investigate other prior instances involving Lambert or his team.
The slo-pitch league, represented by Frances Shapiro Munn of Nelligan O’Brien Payne, has filed a notice of intent to defend. Lambert has yet to file a statement of defence.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Cortney Rattray-Johnson “sold death and misery” as she led the fast-money life of a hard-drug dealer who preyed on Ottawa’s most vulnerable.
That’s what she was told by a judge Tuesday, as a sad ending to Rattray-Johnson’s career as a fentanyl dealer played out at the Elgin Street courthouse.
Ontario Court Justice Ann Alder afforded Rattray-Johnson time to say a tearful goodbye to her supportive family and friends before she was escorted off to prison for eight years.
Just 27 and freshly engaged, Rattray-Johnson stood and cried as she was sentenced for selling every hard drug in the book, including deadly fentanyl (in straight-powdered form). Half of the heroin she was selling was cut with fentanyl. She hugged her family, one by one, before police took her away.
Rattray-Johnson pleaded guilty early on, a key mitigating factor in sentencing, the judge said. The judge also described the drug dealer’s apology as genuine, and noted she didn’t make any excuses.
“I simply want to apologize to the court and the community and my family for my actions, and I take full responsibility for what I have done,” Rattray-Johnson told the court. “I recognize my actions have had a terrible impact on some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and for that, in particular, I am deeply sorry.
“The things I have done do not represent who I am,” she said.
Rattray-Johnson, a hair stylist who has struggled with addiction, expressed deep regret and made a “sincere promise” to come out of prison reformed. She said she would “never, ever be before the court again.”
The judge noted that her greedy, deadly business preyed on the city’s most vulnerable andthat Rattray-Johnson was essentially playing Russian roulette with other people’s lives.
The judge told the first-time offender that she was still “extremely young with a full life ahead of (her),” and said she was fortunate to have supporters who will help her once she’s served her prison term.
Her friends and family filed letters of support at the sentencing hearing. In the letters, those supporters condemned the hard-drug business and acknowledged its scourge.
Her family had no clue she was selling drugs and are grateful that the drugs are off the street.
Rattray-Johnson spent her final night of freedom at a family BBQ on Monday. (Her last supper was a chicken breast with sliced potatoes.)
She previously told the court that she plans on marrying convicted drug dealer Joshua Eyamie-Binks — who is serving 10 years for drugs and guns convictions — once both are released from prison. Eyamie-Binks, 31, was arrested with Rattray-Johnson in February after police executed 11 search warrants following a tip that the couple were trafficking fentanyl. Police seized a large quantity of hard drugs, several firearms and $136,000 found hidden throughout a home.
That the drug-dealing couple had lots of guns (a rifle, two 12-gauge shotguns, a 9-mm semi-automatic handgun, a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver, and a Glock .40) made for a “lethal combination,” the judge said.
Eyamie-Binks, a father of three young children, apologized at his sentencing last month.
“I just want to say I know I messed up and I’m taking responsibility for it. I plan on changing my life after this. I’m sorry for putting my family through this. I really don’t know what to say. I hope I didn’t hurt anybody.”
Rattray-Johnson hopes to take business courses in prison and the couple plan to open a bistro once released.
When Alam Gabriel Buoc — the youngest of nine — arrived from Sudan as a boy in 1996, his parents figured his troubles in life would be limited to learning English, or worse, braving the Ottawa winters.
And those were his only problems until he turned 18 and found fire in a bottle. He held a few honest jobs at a restaurant and in retail but when he got drunk, which was often, he turned to crime, and soon found himself making a living as a cocaine trafficker who had a thing for handguns.
His family has long been disappointed in his life’s path, but some remain firmly supportive — from attending court to regular jail visits. When he was sent to prison in 2014 for guns and cocaine trafficking, his family told authorities that Alam had finally learned his lesson and it was time for him to turn his life around. And though Buoc told the court that he’d come out law-abiding, he is now in the worst trouble of his life.
At just 29, Alam Gabriel Buoc is now at large, wanted on two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Abdulrahman Al-Shammari, 26, and Dirie Olol, 27, on Monday. (He is also wanted on one count of attempted murder in the shooting of Talal Al-Shammari, 27.)
Because he’s been in and out of the court system for years and has had more than 60 contacts with Ottawa’s busy guns-and-gangs unit, his story is well documented down at the Elgin Street courthouse.
In what his siblings called a positive and comfortable life in public housing, a young Alam played sports and went to school. But when he turned 18 his life took a rapid turn. He started drinking heavily. (In court filings across the years, Buoc has admitted that he’s addicted to alcoholic and was attending three AA meetings a week the last time he was out on probation.)
His family blames his life’s troubles on “negative peers” at an Ottawa public housing project. At 18, he started missing curfew, would come home drunk and was known for fighting out on the street.
He is now wanted on two first-degree murder warrants authorized by a justice of the peace at the Elgin Street courthouse on Wednesday afternoon.
Buoc is described by police as black, 6-4, 200 pounds, and armed and dangerous.
In a testament to the human spirit, a two-year-old Ottawa boy fended for himself for 10 days after his mother was killed in their fifth-floor apartment of a public housing building in Mechanicsville, the Citizen has learned.
Seasoned detectives and CHEO doctors have been left marvelling at the young boy’s health, and more, his will to survive.
The child was discovered during a routine fire alarm inspection at the apartment building on Burnside Avenue on March 22. The door was unlocked and when someone checked to make sure everyone was out of the unit during the drill, they found the boy alongside his dead mother.
The 35-year-old woman, whose name is protected by a publication ban, had been dead for 10 days.
Her death was considered suspicious and assigned to homicide detectives. On Thursday, after getting full autopsy reports, police charged crack dealer Mohamad S. Barkhadle, 31, with first-degree murder in the March 12 killing of the woman described by friends as a “good person, good mother.”
A woman who lived next door told the Citizen she heard banging coming from inside her neighbour’s apartment on March 11.
Marcy Chabot said she heard footsteps running down the hallway outside her apartment around 11 p.m. on March 11, then what sounded like a person being slapped. “I heard someone slap someone, skin on skin.”
She heard the door slam shut. “There was about two minutes of banging in the apartment, then nothing.” The banging was on the mother’s living room wall, which adjoined the bedroom wall in Chabot’s apartment. The walls in the apartments in the building on Burnside Avenue are thin and sound travels easily, Chabot said.
Chabot said she had experienced a lot of conflict with the woman, and had called police roughly 10 times to complain about what she considered her neighbour’s abusive behaviour, such as screaming, swearing and pounding on Chabot’s door.
The woman often banged on the wall of her apartment — sometimes for lengthy periods of time — so Chabot said she didn’t take any special notice of the banging that night. “It was unusual only (because) it lasted two minutes.”
“I didn’t know she was in danger or I would have helped her.”
In the subsequent days, her neighbour’s apartment was unusually quiet, said Chabot. She said she doesn’t remember hearing a child crying.
On March 22 around 11 a.m., a maintenance man arrived to check smoke detectors.
The maintenance man knocked on the door, and when no one answered, opened it. Chabot heard him talking to the little boy next-door, “Is your mommy home?”
A few minutes later, the maintenance man emerged from the apartment. “The guy came running out, and he was freaking. He seemed to be in shock.” He began making calls, said Chabot. Paramedics quickly arrived and the boy was led into the hallway, where several neighbours had gathered. They were soon running to get supplies from their apartments.
“One woman ran down the hallway to get a diaper, I got some wipes. (Paramedics) asked me if I had any crackers.” Chabot found a pair of her own socks to give the boy.
The boy, who was always a quiet child, appeared calm, she said. He was dressed in pyjamas. “It was surreal. He wasn’t upset or anything.”
“They changed his diaper right in the hallway.”
From the open door of the apartment, Chabot could see several sippy cups on the coffee table in the living room. The child was an independent little boy who knew how to get food from the fridge and turn on the TV, she said.
“It’s a good thing (the mother) never put him in a playpen or crib. He would have died, because he wouldn’t have had access to food or drink.”
Mohamad S. Barkhadle looked confused Thursday as he appeared in an Ottawa court on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of the woman whose toddler son spent 10 days fending for himself after her death.
Barkhadle, 31, winced and shook his head repeatedly as the charge was read. At one point, the justice of the peace told him to pay attention.
But this wasn’t Barkhadle’s first trip through the Elgin Street courthouse.
In fact, he was last set free on Oct. 26 after Justice Heather Perkins-McVey denied a Crown application to brand Barkhadle a dangerous offender, which would have kept him behind bars for an indeterminate sentence. The Crown also brought an application to designate Barkhadle a long-term offender, which would have come with strict supervision once he was released into the community. Perkins-McVey also denied that application.
Instead, the judge set Barkhadle free after giving him one and a half times credit for the time spent in pre-trial custody at the Innes Road jail. The judge said that conditions at the jail were “difficult” and noted that there were no rehab programs available for the addict there.
Before setting him free in October, the judge said: “Hopefully this has been a wakeup call to Mr. Barkhadle, as he will be closely monitored in future.”
Months later, in May, Barkhadle was again arrested for more serious crimes, including charges of attempted murder for allegedly choking another woman. In that alleged attack, Barkhadle was also charged with aggravated sexual assault, forcible confinement, overcoming resistance by choking, uttering threats, breach of probation and failure to report as required.
Those crimes are alleged to have happened months after police now Barkhadle killed the woman in March.
There is a publication ban on the victim’s name and the accused killer’s lawyer, Diane Condo, declined to comment on the case.
Diane Condo, the defence lawyer who successfully spared Barkhadle a dangerous offender label back in October, is again representing the now-accused killer.
Barkhadle has been on the police radar for awhile. In 2012, police issued an arrest warrant for him and circulated his picture to the public as they hunted for a suspect who had choked a woman during a robbery. The police have also told the press that they fear there may be more victims.
In 2010, Barkhadle was arrested and charged with pimping a 17-year-old girl. He was charged with procuring, living off the avails of prostitution, living off the avails of a juvenile prostitute using violence and breach of probation.
In another set of charges in 2011, Barkhadle was sentenced to seven months in jail for what a judge described as “morally reprehensible” crimes. Barkhadle, who was 25 at the time, was found guilty of possession of a dangerous weapon, criminal harassment and breach of probation but acquitted of intimidation and extortion.
Alam Gabriel Buoc’s short-lived life on the run came to an end on Thursday night when Ottawa police arrested him at a west-end gas station, just a seven-minute drive from where he’s accused of killing two men and sending another to hospital Monday.
Buoc, 29, was charged Friday afternoon with two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Abdulrahman Al-Shammari, 26, and Dirie Olol, 27. (He is also charged on one count of attempted murder in the shooting of Talal Al-Shammari, 27.)
Olol was shot in the forehead. His body was found inside a car, its engine still running, on Wayne Avenue East. Abdulrahman Al-Shammari was found lying on a Tavistock Road driveway with a gunshot wound to the chest.
The victims’ grieving families have described them as good, kind men.
Their accused killer, captured just one day after lead detective Sgt. Chris O’Brien got authorized murder warrants at the Elgin Street courthouse, is a convicted cocaine trafficker who has a thing for handguns.
Buoc arrived from Sudan as a 10-year-old boy, the youngest of nine. His parents figured his life’s troubles would be limited to learning English, or worse, braving the Ottawa winters.
He did well at first, and went to school and played sports, with his family reporting to authorities that he enjoyed a comfortable life in their public housing neighbourhood.
But when he turned 18, his life took a rapid turn when he found fire in a bottle and, according to his family, started hanging around the worst crowd.
He held a few honest jobs at a restaurant and in retail but when he got drunk, which was often, he turned to crime, and soon found himself making a living as a cocaine trafficker.
His family has long been disappointed in his life’s path.
Buoc has had more than 60 contacts with Ottawa’s guns and gangs unit.
He still doesn’t have a lawyer on the record but hopes to hire one from Edelson & Friedman, whose slogan on fees is, “We believe that vigorous legal representation should not be reserved for the rich and famous.”
Defence lawyer Laura Remigio, an associate at Edelson & Friedman, addressed the court Friday, and the case will resume next month to confirm Buoc’s retainer.
The Ottawa police drug squad didn’t waste time or take any chances when it got a complaint that fentanyl was being sold out of a public housing unit on Caldwell Avenue.
All of the evidence — including video surveillance — indicated that the drug of death was being trafficked at the unit so police got a warrant and, on April 25, busted down the door and arrested Royston Christie, 61.
The authorized drug raid was executed just days after a woman had overdosed on fentanyl in the same unit. The woman lived thanks to the paramedics who saved her life.
Christie was fingerprinted and shown a jail cell. He was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking fentanyl, simple drug possession and proceeds of crime ($135 seized by police).
The police department’s media relations unit issued a news release the next day, naming Christie as an accused fentanyl dealer at a time when the drug was killing people, from addicts to first-time users, across the city.
The news release said police had seized 15 grams of straight powder fentanyl and said it had a street value of $7,000. A deputy police chief known for his fight against fentanyl was quick to tweet the “excellent work” by the department’s drug unit.
The police release also named Christie’s street. The statement was picked up widely across the country, and all of the news stories drew heavily from it. No news outlets — including the Citizen — had Christie’s side of the story.
“I was presumed guilty,” Christie told the Citizen.
His release was contested by federal prosecutors and Christie spent a week in jail before winning bail. He had never been in jail before, let alone the notorious Innes Road jail.
“It was horrible, the way you are treated,” Christie said.
Days after he got bail, he was evicted from his public housing unit on the grounds that he was selling fentanyl.
But here’s the thing — the lab tests finally came back, and it turns out that the powder seized by police wasn’t actually fentanyl.
The results came back as not a drug, and Christie says the powder, which was seized from his linen closet by the bathroom was actually face powder one of his girlfriends got from the food bank.
The police say lab results take time and their policy is to charge first if officers believe they’ve seized drugs, and analyze later, especially at a time when fentanyl is the most deadly drug on street.
Federal prosecutors have withdrawn the charges against Christie, who now feels vindicated.
His lawyer, Tobias Okada-Phillips, said: “I support my client trying to clear his name. As a defence lawyer, it is frustrating when our clients are presumed guilty. This is especially so at the bail stage when so little information is available.”
Christie says he routinely let drug addicts hang out in his apartment, to use clean needles and letting them take showers. He started giving refuge to drug addicts after seeing them shoot up in the stairwell, he says.
Christie didn’t attend his May 7 eviction hearing, saying he never saw the notice letter. At the hearing, a police officer testified that 15 grams of fentanyl had been seized. The hearing also heard that there had been 25 drug overdoses on one weekend in the past month across the city at the time.
But in fact, no fentanyl had been seized from Christie’s apartment.
He had 72 hours to clear out his apartment, but he had nowhere to put all his stuff. He says he lost three quarters of his belongings.
The sheriff who enforced the eviction order called for back-up as a safety precaution and police dispatched four officers.
“I want my apartment back,” Christie said, whose criminal charges have been dropped.
He’s the last guy you want driving the school bus or anywhere near children, let alone naked kids on a nude beach.
But that’s where a disgraced OC Transpo driver found himself, first at the wheel of a school bus, and later attending nudist clubs. The child-sex predator only applied for the school bus driver’s job years ago because he was attracted to young girls and boys. It’s also the reason the since-fired OC Transpo driver attended nudist clubs.
His disturbing admissions were revealed in an agreed statement of facts filed at his recent sentencing hearing in Ottawa court. The driver, whose name is shielded by a publication ban, pleaded guilty early on and was sentenced to nine years in prison for sexually abusing four children, aged one to six years old.
The diagnosed pedophile also pleaded guilty for having more than half a million images and videos depicting sex crimes against children. Ottawa Police found the child pornography at his suburban home when they arrested him in 2016.
It’s not the first time police came calling about allegations of child-sex crimes. Police first investigated him back in 1999 after someone complained, but the probe didn’t yield criminal charges. The file was revived after a victim came forward, and this time the driver admitted everything to police and expressed remorse for terrorizing his young victims, off and on, across 30 years.
In victim-impact statements filed in court, the victims described the lingering effects of their abuse. They find it hard to trust anyone to this day.
Their predator read an apology in court and his defence lawyer Paul Lewandowski filed letters of support from former co-workers and friends who said they’d be there for him once released back into the community.
Lewandowski said his client is “focusing on the future and getting treatment.”
In an interview months before he was sentenced, the offender said he needed help, expressed remorse for his victims, and said he was sorry for “embarrassing the guys” at OC Transpo.
Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden noted in a July 20 decision that the man’s early guilty plea was a big mitigating factor, and that it spared his victims from testifying.
“His guilty plea means his victims did not need to testify in court and it took away the uncertainty of the outcome of this proceeding,” Wadden said. “The victims themselves may not realize the significance of this, but those who work in the criminal justice system can attest to how much further suffering this has saved them.”
The man was credited for pre-sentence custody, so his actual sentence is just under seven years.
He was the guy in the neighbourhood who always had popsicles for the kids, and a lot of times he’d invite them down into his basement to make movies.
He’d film them as they acted out their directed roles. Sometimes they just pretended to fly.
And they were always told to change their clothes before scenes, and when they did, Ottawa police allege Karl Njolstad would secretly film them.
Njolstad, 55, is charged with a series of child-sex crimes, including invitation to sexual touching, sexual interference, possession and production of child porn, voyeurism and sexually assaulting a female under the age of 12 while making child porn.
Ottawa police said the alleged crimes against two young girls happened on Aug. 2 in his Uplands home.
Njolstad appeared via video at the Elgin Street courthouse on Saturday morning. He remains in jail awaiting his next court appearance.
The child-sex case has devastated the families of the alleged victims and left some neighbours cringing.
Ottawa police executed a search warrant at his home on Saturday to collect evidence in their case against the one-time public servant who lived alone.
Police fear there could be more victims and want anyone who has any information about this case to contact them at 613-236-1222, ext. 5760. Tips may also be sent electronically to mcm@ottawapolice.ca .
Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers, toll-free at 1-800-222-8477(TIPS) or downloading the Ottawa police app.
Abdirahman Ahmed’s trail of terror has ended after an Ottawa judge branded the sadistic rapist a dangerous offender, sending him to prison for an indeterminate sentence.
The designation is for life and comes after Ahmed committed horrific rapes — one at knifepoint in an alley — in 2011 and 2009.
The high school dropout originally from Kenya pleaded guilty to the vicious sex crimes, and also pleaded guilty to a severe, foot-stomping beating of another inmate at the Ottawa jail in 2015. Ahmed, 32, also pleaded guilty to assaulting a guard — he threw his urine on a correctional officer — at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
“Based on all of the evidence on this sentencing hearing and without any evidence of Mr. Ahmed’s treatability beyond a hope for change, I cannot risk the safety of the community,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny said in her decision.
The judge said his release would now rest in the hands of the parole board.
The lengthy dangerous offender application was successfully argued by Assistant Crown Attorney Peter Napier.
Ahmed arrived in Canada when he was seven. He grew up in Ottawa, and his folks split up when he was 10. His father left town for California, and Ahmed hasn’t said a good word about him since.
He didn’t follow his mother’s house rules and started stealing at 10, partly out of boredom and partly out of envy. He quit school at 14 after he was suspended for stealing, court heard. When he was expelled in Grade 9, his marks were not usually above 10 per cent. He graduated to break-and-enters at 16.
Court heard that he felt invincible when he drank hard. It gave him a sense of “no fear”.
After he was expelled from school, he worked a bunch of honest jobs: fast-food joints, masonry, roofing, retail, telemarketing.
He stole only when drunk, and said when sober that he couldn’t steal, as “that’s the real me.”
Ahmed has never married, though he had a live-in girlfriend when he was in his early 20s and the couple — who have long since separated — have a young daughter.
The judge noted that the Crown “correctly” characterized Ahmed’s criminal history as “dense and varied.”
“It is replete with examples while in the community and while incarcerated of his rapid mood changes, extreme impulsivity, power struggles, inability to control his anger, acting out with accompanying self-harm, increasingly violent behaviour and refusal to engage in any meaningful rehabilitative programs or treatments,” the judge said in her decision.
When Ray Nicholas noticed a bump on his stomach, he went to see his family doctor and was advised it was likely a hernia, and that there was no need for treatment.
A month later, in July 2015, he returned to the doctor, complaining of pain. He says he was told to keep rubbing and pushing it in to alleviate the discomfort.
No medication prescribed, no referral to a specialist.
A month after that, Nicholas needed life-saving surgery.
The details of how Nicholas ended up on the brink of death are revealed in a $5-million malpractice and negligence lawsuit filed by him against the Arnprior & District Memorial Hospital and Dr. Mark Robson.
The 18-page statement of claim says that doctors and hospital staff failed him miserably, and accuses them of utter incompetence at every step. None of the allegations has been tested in court, and Dr. Robson and the hospital have yet to file statements of defence. In fact, a hospital spokesman told the Citizen that they have yet to receive the statement of claim, and when they do, they won’t be commenting on the case.
On Aug. 12, 2015 — two months after his first trip to the doctor — Nicholas felt severe pain. He was nauseous, sweaty and had a fever so a friend brought him to the Arnprior hospital. The first nurse to see him figured he had a stomach virus, and said he would be kept overnight for evaluation by a surgeon in the morning.
His wife asked staff if Nicholas should be rushed to an Ottawa hospital to see a surgeon right away, but they said it was not necessary. The next morning, on Aug. 13, 2015, Nicholas was seen by a surgeon who ordered that he be transferred to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital in Ottawa. His wife says staff at the Arnprior hospital said it would be slow-going because the ambulance would likely get stuck in morning traffic. Moreover, she said staff told her his condition was stable and there was no need to rush him to the Ottawa hospital. They told her to go out for breakfast and take her time getting to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital.
Once Nicholas finally arrived at the hospital, doctors there determined that his hernia had in fact ruptured and he immediately underwent surgery. Because of the ruptured hernia, Nicholas suffered septic shock, causing heart failure; a collapsed lung; and liver and kidney damage.
Now 37, Nicholas has had to learn how to do everything again, from breathing on his own to walking.
“It’s been an everyday struggle,” he told the Citizen.
“(Nicholas) was a security alarm technician. He has sustained, and continues to sustain loss of income by reason of the breach of of contract, breach of duty, negligence, battery and medical malpractice. (Nicholas’s) ability to earn a living has been, and remains, impaired,” states the lawsuit.
Nicholas used to hunt and fish a lot. (He once caught a 54-pound muskie on the Madawaska.) And he used to coach his daughter’s softball team.
“But it all came to a halt,” said Nicholas.
He goes to the gym as often as he can, and is slowly working up the strength to go fishing again, and hopefully with his young daughter in tow.
An OC Transpo driver accused of sexually abusing three young boys from 2012 to 2016 is now facing charges of threatening to kill one of their parents.
Philip Herbert, the accused child-sex criminal, is also charged with mischief after Ottawa police say he broke one of the boys’ father’s golf clubs before returning them by throwing them on the front yard.
Herbert, 38, was charged earlier this year for an alleged series of child sex crimes against three boys dating back to 2012. The charges include sexual assault and sexual touching.
The sex crimes investigation began Jan. 13 when a boy under 16 reported that he had been inappropriately touched by Herbert. The sex assault squad’s investigation identified two other alleged victims, both boys under 16. In all, Herbert, who used to drive OC Transpo high school runs, is charged with three counts of sexual assault, three counts of sexual interference, four counts of uttering threats and one count of mischief to property (golf clubs).
The city’s transit operations office declined to comment on Herbert’s status at OC Transpo, saying “personnel matters are confidential and we are not able to disclose any employee information.”
Police child-abuse detectives fear there could be more victims. Anyone with information is asked to call them at 613-236-1222, ext. 5944.
Accused killer Adam Picard is back in jail after surrendering to police Friday morning.
The former military man dabbed at tears and sat shaking in court moments before Ottawa police handcuffed him on the third floor of the Elgin Street courthouse.
Picard, 33, was set free back in November by Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett who stayed the first-degree murder case because it had taken too long to get to trial.
It had been four years since his arrest in the June 2012 killing of Fouad Nayel, 28.
The judge at the time said the system had failed everyone.
But on Thursday in a unanimous ruling, the Ontario Court of Appeal reinstated the murder charge and ordered Picard back to trial.
When that will happen remains unclear and while court heard there are hopes to set trial for November, that may depend on Picard’s next legal move. His lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, is not only considering an appeal of this week’s ruling but also another application to stay the charge again for delay of trial.
Picard is also going to apply for bail while he awaits trial.
Before Picard surrendered to police, Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips told court in light of the appeal court ruling, “the stay is lifted and Mr. Picard returns to the jeopardy he’s in.”
The judge also noted that the court wants the trial to start as soon as possible.
“Because of the nature of the charge and the appeal ruling, the court has made (this case) a priority and resources will be made available to handle it,” the judge said.
The last time Picard was at the Elgin Street Courthouse was back in November when he walked out as a free man after Judge Parfett’s stunning decision.
She said at the time: “I cannot but emphasize that the more serious the charges, the more the justice system has to work to ensure that the matter is tried within a reasonable time … the thread that runs through the present case is the culture of complacency that the Supreme Court condemned in Jordan.”
In July 2016, the Supreme Court said that even the most serious criminal cases must be concluded within 30 months of arrest.
But Ontario’s appeal court disagreed with Parfett’s interpretation of the Jordan decision. The appeal court said the Picard case deserved more latitude since charges were laid well before the Jordan ruling, and that the delays would have been acceptable under the previous legal regime.
The appeal court also said Parfett made mistakes in her trial delay calculations. The appeal court found that, properly analyzed, the crown could be held responsible for only 14 months of the four-year delay, which would keep the case well within the bounds of previous Supreme Court guidelines.
Nayel’s family was devastated when Picard won a stay back in November. At the time, Nayel’s father said the family’s heart had been ripped out by the justice system. “If a person is found innocent by his peers so be it,” said Amine Nayel. “I believe in our system but not now. The so-called system is broken. What happened to us is a grave mistake.”
Nayel, a 28-year-old construction worker, had been missing for five months when his decomposed remains were discovered in the woods near Calabogie in 2012.
Police say Nayel knew his accused killer through drug deals.
Assistant Crown Attorneys Dallas Mack and Louise Tansey declined comment on the widely-read appeal court ruling that has restored their long-awaited prosecution of Adam Picard.
Most guys are trying to get out of the notorious Ottawa jail, but not young Damian O’Reilly.
He was actually pretty desperate to get inside the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre after hatching a drug-smuggling plot that would see marijuana sold to inmates for 10 times its street value.
All he had to do was find a crack in the system, some sure-fire way of getting arrested and jailed.
And it had to be quick, for O’Reilly, 20, had “hooped” not one, not two, but eight Kinder Surprise eggs filled with marijuana, tobacco, matches and rolling papers before setting out to get arrested on June 19, 2016.
The Italian chocolate egg treat that comes with a toy inside (assembly required) is one of the most popular ways of smuggling contraband into Canadian jails. The yolk-coloured plastic capsule that holds the surprise toy is thin and flexible, making it easier to ‘hoop’ — a jail term for inserting contraband into your rectum.
O’Reilly figured the quickest way to get arrested would be to throw a rock at a police cruiser in front of the courthouse and, sure enough, he got the job done in minutes flat. It helped that he was already on probation, so when he was arrested, he was held for bail and shipped off to the old Innes Road jail.
And that’s where his plot unravelled.
It’s not known if the guard noticed O’Reilly was in some discomfort but whatever the reason, the guard had suspicions that O’Reilly might be smuggling drugs. The young inmate was escorted to dry cell No. 9. A dry cell has no plumbing and guards will either attempt to seize the contraband or wait for it to be expelled.
In this case, it was O’Reilly himself who, once alone in the dry cell, removed eight Kinder Surprise eggs from his rectum. A guard had to then collect the eggs and photograph them before securing them inside the Ottawa police drug safe at the jail.
In all, the eight eggs contained 59 grams of marijuana, a gram of MDMA, tobacco, rolling papers and matches.
O’Reilly pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and was sentenced Monday to two years, less 250 days credited for pre-trial custody. His failed smuggling attempt is documented in an agreed statement of facts filed in court.
Defence lawyer Paolo Giancaterino praised his young client’s efforts to improve himself since his arrest.
“Damian has been working hard to turn his life around. He is a young man who is aiming to be a productive member of our community when he is released,” Giancaterino said.
O’Reilly’s hooping of eight Kinder Surprise eggs is believed to be a record in criminal defence and jailhouse circles, with the closest recorded feat coming in at just four eggs back in 2010.
A year earlier, in 2009, and also at the Ottawa jail, inmate Gregory Ingram, 33, choked on a Kinder Surprise egg filled with drugs and later died at hospital. It was a strip search at the Innes Road jail that led to his death in the early morning hours of June 21, 2009. The guards noticed that he reached into his underwear and then brought a closed fist to his mouth, according to an inquest. It was obvious that he was trying to hide the drugs in his mouth. Paramedics later discovered the yellow plastic egg lodged in his throat. They were able to remove it, but not before Ingram’s brain was deprived of oxygen long enough to be left in a permanent vegetative state. He died three days later after his family removed him from life support.
In that case, the drugs were smuggled for personal use. But in O’Reilly’s case, the drugs were bound for the lucrative jailhouse market, where drug debts are usually paid in e-transfers to third parties. Each customer is given a numerical identifier and when their third-party representative makes the transfer, the number associated with the customer is included in the cents column of the transfer amount, making it easy to track payments. It is not known if O’Reilly was forced to smuggle in the drugs at someone’s behest or if he was acting alone.
Shutting down smuggling into Ontario jails is something the province has spent money on recently. A body scanner machine — a 918-kilogram device that takes a high-definition picture of an inmate standing on a moving platform that passes through a narrow X-ray beam — was installed in the Ottawa jail on Aug. 29, 2016. The machine was one of 26 bought by the province at a cost of $9.5 million.
Connor Stevenson, just 18 and unarmed, was knifed to death in the stairwell of his Jasmine Crescent apartment building over 14 lousy grams of weed.
It was April 14, 2015 — a Tuesday afternoon — and he had been stabbed in the heart and left to die alone after a drug robbery gone wrong.
His so-called friend, David Dubois, was the one behind the deadly robbery.
And on Wednesday afternoon, Dubois, 21, finally stood up in court and took responsibility.
In a deal that spares him prosecution for second-degree murder — his original charge — Dubois pleaded guilty instead to the lesser charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to eight years in prison. After credit for pre-trial time custody, he’ll have just under five years to serve behind bars.
The manslaughter deal, negotiated by defence lawyer Ewan Lyttle, was billed as a resolution to a case that would have had serious triable issues.
According to the agreed statement of facts, Dubois stabbed Stevenson four times in a bid to protect an accomplice. Dubois feared Stevenson was about to throw his accomplice down the stairs during the robbery, according to the statement. (This at a time when Dubois thought the accomplice was pregnant, court heard.)
Before sentencing him, Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett described the killing as pointless and tragic.
The judge noted that Dubois is still young and “not beyond redemption.”
Parfett wished him the best of luck.
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Courtroom sketch of David Dubois
There will be no second chances for Connor Stevenson, though, and, in the moving words of his father, there will always be an empty chair at the table for every family gathering.
Scott Stevenson, in an emotional victim-impact statement, told court that he now feels hopeless and helpless.
“I lost the person I love the most,” he said, fighting back tears.
He spoke of nightmares in what he called his living hell.
He reminded the court that Dubois joined grieving friends after the killing and signed a sympathy card for the family.
Laurie Beaudoin, the victim’s mother, filed a victim-impact statement condemning Dubois’ “total disregard for human life.”
“Your family gets to live on and you will still be a young man when you are freed. Connor, on the other hand, had 18 short years on Earth. … My son is a good man and had no known enemies except for you.”
Her statement was read in court by Crown prosecutor Tim Wightman, who called the case a “true tragedy” and another unvarnished reminder that “young people who resort to the use of knives” cause “immeasurable pain and suffering.”
Dubois planned the robbery and talked about it with an alleged accomplice for an hour beforehand, according to an agreed statement of facts filed in court.
He also took steps to cover his tracks by using an app in a bid to disguise his phone number before texting to arrange a drug deal in the stairwell.
Dubois was arrested hours after Stevenson was laid to rest in 2015. At the funeral, friends and family remembered Stevenson as a devoted son and loving boyfriend. His girlfriend told a packed church that she felt like her heart had been ripped out, and that she cried herself to sleep at night with the hope that his killing was just a bad dream.
He was also remembered as an outstanding teammate in rugby and football.
Serial rapist Philip Wilson called it The Pink Drink.
He mixed it himself, and laced it with rape drugs such as GHB and Ketamine, only to bill it as a keep-the-party-going cocktail to his targets — mostly ByWard Market bar staff and their regulars.
But there was no party, just an apartment floor, where they lay incapacitated and unable to consent, let alone resist, as he raped them while videotaping it on his cellphone.
The heavy drugs left them blacked out for as long as four hours, and the women were left with no memory of the vicious sex attacks.
It was Wilson’s own shocking collection of rape videos that anchored the case against him, and on Thursday he was found guilty of secretly drugging, raping and videotaping 14 women from October 2013 until his arrest on March 11, 2015.
In some cases, Wilson, described as narcissistic during the judge-alone trial, would later send some of the disturbing images he had taken to his victims.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland found that Wilson, 33, slipped his victims stupefying drugs in a deliberate plot to sexually assault them on videotape.
The judge also ruled that his girlfriend, who videotaped some of sex assaults, was a coerced accomplice who was miserably trapped in a severely abusive relationship.
On the rape-video collection that secured Wilson’s convictions, Hackland said: “The accused’s videos demonstrate in a graphic and disturbing manner that the accused enjoyed sexually touching these women and taking close-up images of their genitals while they were either heavily drugged or comatose and he retained and collected these images for his own purposes. … None of the women were aware that they were being recorded and none had been asked or given permission, as the accused admitted.”
Wilson testified in his own defence at trial, claiming the women wanted to take rape drugs and that the sex was consensual.
But Hackland didn’t buy his story, and flatly rejected Wilson’s testimony, saying it appeared as though he made it up as he went along.
The judge also noted that drug dealer’s testimony was self-serving and that he had a grandiose view of himself.
Wilson, seated in the prisoner’s box, showed no outward emotion as the guilty verdicts were delivered. The serial rapist also testified that he respected women, but the judge set the record straight, telling court the evidence showed that was a twisted detachment from reality.
At trial in June, and in the face of his own video evidence of him exploiting drugged-out women, Wilson finally said it was wrong.
Wilson, a longtime drug dealer to ByWard Market bar staff and their regulars, testified that it was “morally” wrong to exploit one of the victims after the court played a video of him sexually touching her when she was severely drugged.
Asked by his lawyer, Trevor Brown, at trial to explain why he did it, Wilson told court: “I was completely under the influence of a lot of drugs. I’m very disappointed in myself. … It’s wrong. Morally, it’s not right.”
After reviewing another video of another victim in court, he admitted that she was in no state to consent. Reviewing the video with a “sober and clear head,” Wilson testified: “I don’t believe she was able to consent.”
“Again, at the time, I was pretty intoxicated with drugs and alcohol,” Wilson told court.
Wilson said he was “overstepping my limit.”
“Now, looking at this (video), I am disappointed and embarrassed. I regret my actions,” Wilson told court.
The guilty verdicts Thursday marked a clear victory for Crown Attorney Meaghan Cunningham, who announced she will be filing a motion to declare Wilson a dangerous offender, which means, if successful, he would serve an indeterminate sentence.
That also means Wilson will not be sentenced for his sex crimes until the conclusion of the dangerous offender hearing, which has not yet been scheduled.
The horrifying case has shaken regulars and bar staff in the ByWard Market. Wilson was convicted on dozens of charges including sexual assault, drug trafficking, aggravated assault and administering a noxious drug for sex assault.
Wilson preyed on bar staff, usually when they showed up to his apartment after their shifts to buy drugs.
Wilson’s ex-girlfriend testified at trial and she was not just a key witness, but the reason Ottawa police cracked the case.
On March 11, 2015, around 2:30 a.m., a neighbour called 911 to report a domestic dispute in the apartment above hers on Nelson Street.
Wilson’s pregnant girlfriend was found bloodied, bruised and unconscious. She was hospitalized for several injuries, including a fractured vertebra. She lost the baby the next day.
Wilson was arrested on scene and Ottawa police found large quantities of drugs in his apartment — including cocaine, GHB and ketamine.
In an authorized search of Wilson’s apartment, police also seized his electronic devices and found the rape photos and videos. It was this key find that built the successful prosecution.
Ottawa’s Omar Anwar, who was arrested in June on charges that he impersonated a dentist and forged medical school records, is now also facing several counts of assault.
The criminal investigation against Anwar began after the National Dental Examining Board of Canada called Ottawa police saying someone had tried to take dental exams on May 27-28 with falsified credentials. In order to write the exam, applicants must have a degree from an accredited dental school.
The investigation revealed that Anwar allegedly accessed the University of Minnesota credentials of a real dentist and then applied online to take the dental exams. (Anwar, 29, is also charged with uttering a forged document.)
In June, police said if the investigation revealed the accused actually did work on patients as a dental hygienist or dentist, he would be charged with assault.
The police have now filed eight counts of assault against Anwar for alleged incidents in March and April. The information filed in court does not detail the extent, if any, of the alleged performed work.
Anwar, whose bail conditions require him to live at his family home in Alta Vista, didn’t want to give his side of the story when contacted by the Citizen on Friday, saying only that his criminal case is a private matter.
Anwar worked at an Ottawa dental clinic for a short period of time, apparently shadowing hygienists and dentists leading up to national dental exams, which he never took.
The reputed imposter is also charged with false pretense for landing those jobs, police said. He was also charged with uttering forged documents for a series of alleged fake resumés.
While the accused fraudster never worked as a dentist, he portrayed himself as one in online profiles, including one that said he was a specialist. On social media accounts, he portrayed himself as a dental surgeon when he wasn’t posting selfies — some of him posing with leased luxury cars, including a Lamborghini. His LinkedIn account said he worked as a dental-oral surgeon at an Ottawa clinic since 2014.
His release conditions also prohibit him from working “in any capacity” in the practice of dentistry, and forbid him from pretending to be a doctor online.
Anwar is scheduled to appear at the Elgin Street courthouse Monday morning to face the assault charges.
Violet Lucas conquered more than her fair share of hardship. After escaping an abusive husband, she raised seven children on her own.
She had only a Grade 10 education and when her children were old enough, she learned a trade and got a job in a factory. She stretched a dollar, shopped from the dented-tin bin, sewed and knitted what she could and made all the birthday cakes.
She sacrificed, and made sure her kids, all seven of them, had what they needed — even hockey and her famous roast beef.
But her best life lesson was instilling in her children the value of a good, formal education — something she never had. She didn’t want them to struggle like she had.
She carved a good family life out of a hard path. And Lucas tried her best to never let anyone down, even when she, herself, was down on her luck. Everyone else came first.
It was this remarkable single mother who spent the last moments of her life in the most awful way at Extendicare Laurier Manor on Montreal Road.
On April 7, 2017, Lucas was found dead with her head wedged between her mattress and her bed railing, her body slumped down on the floor.
Lucas, 79, suffered from diabetes and had a history of strokes. She used a wheelchair and was not strong enough to get out of bed without assistance.
How she died remains unclear and unexplained.
The long-term care home and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care that oversees the home have little to say. Her family is in the dark and has been provided few details. Months after her death, they await the results of a coroner’s investigation.
Lucas’s death comes at a time when the quality of care at nursing homes in Ottawa is under scrutiny. Following Citizen reports of abuse and neglect at three of the four homes operated by the City of Ottawa, investigations and reviews of city-run homes were launched. But Lucas died in a privately-run facility, which will not fall under the scope of the city’s investigations. Extendicare Laurier Manor is one of 23 other homes in Ottawa not run by the city — and not under a spotlight.
And a spotlight is what Lucas’s family wants. Because while it might be unclear how she died, what is clear is that she was failed, not by her family, but by those paid to look after her. A series of failings by the home, detailed in provincial inspection reports, reveal, in part, what went wrong the night of her death.
It was sometime after 10 p.m., when Lucas found herself in distress.
There were two safety alarms in her room, both designed to alert nursing staff if a resident is out of bed or has been removed from bed, or has somehow fallen from bed in the night.
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On April 7, 2017, Violet Lucas was found dead with her head wedged between her mattress and her bed railing, her body slumped down on the floor. Son Derek Lucas is still waiting for answers.
But both alarm systems were useless because staff didn’t use them properly. The alarm systems weren’t mounted properly and the wrong batteries had been used, according to an inspection report.
Another failing revealed in the inspection report is that patients in beds with railings weren’t evaluated beforehand to assess and “minimize risk.”
On the night Lucas died, nursing staff wouldn’t have been alerted because the alarms weren’t working, she hadn’t been evaluated for a railing bed, and staff had failed to ensure her plan of care was fully up to date, according to the report. (Lucas also had a new mattress that had not been tested for use with a bed-railing system.)
After Lucas died, inspectors examined the bed rails used by 50 residents at the facility and found that 13 of them had to be tightened.
The circumstances leading to her death have left her family heartbroken, and in the name of his mother, Derek Lucas wants a full airing of how she was failed.
“People in nursing homes are our mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers, and grandfathers. They aren’t numbers on a balance sheet, They are people, and people deserve to be treated with the care and respect we expect others to treat us,” Derek Lucas said.
“My mother was let down, I was let down, and as her primary responsible caregiver, I feel I let her down.”
He said the staff seemed considerate and caring, but now he wonders how competent they were if they couldn’t even figure out which batteries to use.
“While the staff made it feel like things were going so well over the years, I had no idea that, in the background, there were systematic issues with simple things like making sure batteries were replaced in critical aids like bed alarms,” he said.
He says he can’t help but wonder whether his mother struggled to breathe, or if she called out for help. He wonders if staff could have intervened in time if the alarms were working. It was a personal support worker who found Lucas and alerted nursing staff.
Nobody wanted to put Lucas in a nursing home, but after she stopped taking her medication, it was required. She had several ailments and it was the right place for her, at least at the time.
When her family first visited her, she’d be waiting for them at the front door hoping they’d come to take her home.
They did everything possible to make her laugh and always brought her a decent cup of coffee and made the best of it. They fed the squirrels birdseed in the garden. Lucas couldn’t really put words together at the time, but the look on her face was priceless, recalled her daughter-in-law, Donna Lucas.
The odd Big Mac helped, too.
But there was no getting away from the sadness of seeing this proud and dignified woman, once filled with laughter, now in a home, quiet and ailing, and no longer cheering on her beloved Green Bay Packers.
“Each time I visited her I could see her declining more and more and it broke my heart each time,” Lucas’s youngest daughter, Patricia Sweet, said.
Derek and his ex-wife, Donna, last visited Lucas on April 7, just hours before she died. As usual, they brought coffee but Lucas didn’t seem to be herself that day. Staff were getting ready to get her out of bed for supper and they didn’t want to be in the way, so they said goodbye, and said they’d be back the following day. And they hoped she’d be better. Derek got the call that night.
He, like the rest of the family, is waiting for the coroner’s investigation to conclude with the hopes of learning more details about his mother’s death.
The family has been told that she likely died of cardiac arrest but has not been given more details, notably whether she went into cardiac arrest before or after her head became wedged between the mattress and bed railing.
The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care said that beyond its inspection report, it will not comment on Lucas’s case.
Extendicare Laurier Manor also said it couldn’t comment on the case.
“At Extendicare Laurier Manor, the safety of our residents is of paramount importance to us. In this case, due to privacy regulations, we are not able to discuss the specifics of this case,” Jennifer Cummins, the home’s administrator, said in a statement.
Lucas’s death is not the first incident that has prompted ministry inspectors to examine the facility.
A Citizen review of ministry inspection reports over the five-year period from 2012 to 2016 at Extendicare Laurier Manor reveals the home has been found non-compliant 83 times. That number leaps to 108 when available data from 2017 are included.
A facility can be found non-compliant for a number of reasons, ranging from a mild infraction — a failure to offer patients a snack in the afternoon and evening, for example — to something much more serious, like a failure to prevent staff-on-patient abuse.
When it comes to abuse, the Citizen’s audit shows that since 2012 there have been at least 15 incidents of reported neglect or patient abuse — either sexual, physical or verbal — that have led to a non-compliance order being issued against the facility.
At city-run facilities — which officials have said may face systemic problems — there are far fewer incidents of non-compliance or patient abuse. In fact, when compared with the Citizen’s audit of city-run facilities, Extendicare Laurier Manor has dozens more non-compliance citations than any single city-run home. And the city’s four long-term care homes only had four more instances of patient abuse than Extendicare Laurier Manor had on its own.
Of the 15 incidents, nine involved reported staff-to-resident abuse while five involved resident-on-resident abuse.
Issaiah Clachar, just 17, used to tell his mother he’d go far in life, and well beyond his family apartment on Jasmine Crescent.
But, in the end, he was killed just steps from his building after stealing a lousy bag of weed.
Clachar was knifed eight times — four to the chest, two to the back, one to his left forearm and another to his right thigh — hours after he stole another man’s weed on Sept. 20, 2015. He justified the drug robbery to friends, saying teen dealer Keanu Croteau had short-changed him in the past and once sold him crummy weed.
It was Croteau’s girlfriend who delivered the weed — just over five ounces — to Clachar, with him refusing to pay and telling her to scram. “Whatever happens, it’s on you,” she said as she left.
Croteau, then 18, and Mohamad Hamade, then 25, pulled into Jasmine Crescent in a black Acura, looking for a settling of accounts. It was young Clachar who reached for his pellet gun from inside his gold Nissan before the confrontation spiralled.
The Jasmine Crescent killers took turns knifing Clachar to death before running off into the night, only to be caught by police in the tall grass by Highway 174 and the Pineview Golf Course. They were both covered in their victim’s blood, and later charged with second degree murder.
On Thursday, two years later, the killers finally took responsibility and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. The plea deal will spare the victim’s family a trial and may afford the killers more lenient sentences.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips ordered pre-sentence reports on Thursday while the killers sat statue-still in the prisoner’s box.
Clachar’s family has described him as a soft-spoken, harmless boy, but on the night he was stabbed to death, he was the one reaching for a pellet gun, the one he used to shoot Hamade between the eyes. It was only a pellet and he required only one stitch, but that pellet gun looked like a real gun, according to an agreed statement of facts read in court on Thursday.
A police search of the victim’s Nissan turned up three knives and a pair of brass knuckles. The victim, unlike his killers, didn’t pull a knife in the fight outside the Jasmine Crescent apartment building.
The young killers, for unknown reasons, abandoned their car at the scene and ran only to be tracked down by K-9 officer Copper. The police case against Croteau and Hamade was steeped in DNA. The victim’s blood was found throughout the killers’ car.
Before Clachar got caught up in the drug robbery gone wrong, he played football and ran track in high school. Croteau didn’t have a criminal record until Thursday.
Croteau and Hamade are expected to be sentenced later this year.
Days before Carol Culleton was beaten and strangled to death, her boyfriend told her to call the police about the handyman that wouldn’t leave her alone.
There were unwanted texts, and that morning she had pulled out for work only to find him parked at the end of the laneway.
Culleton, 66, had told him to stop visiting, but he didn’t.
“She was a little worried about it,” Robin “Rocky” Craig testified Wednesday at the trial of Basil Borutski, who is facing three charges of first-degree murder.
“She told him to stop coming around and figured that’d be the end of it.”
Craig, 56, recalled for the jury — six women, six men — that he told Culleton to call the police but she said it “wasn’t necessary.”
He also recalled his dead girlfriend’s haunting words the night before she was killed: “I don’t feel comfortable being here alone in case he shows up.”
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Carol Culleton had retired only days before she was killed
Culleton was strangled to death at her cottage on Sept. 22, 2015. Before day’s end, two other women — Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, and Nathalie Warmerdam, 48 — would be gunned down by Borutski, 60.
Borutski is defending himself, though his defence has been mostly silent — he has yet to stand and address the jury, or enter a plea of not guilty.
Wednesday was not the first time the jury has heard about Culleton’s troubles with the handyman she had met in Wilno.
Jeff Shelp, 55, a senior analyst with the Department of National Defence and friend of Culleton’s, told court last week that she had become increasingly worried about her friendship with “Basil” in the months before her death.
The last time Shelp saw Culleton was at her retirement party, four days before she was killed. He recalled that she was going to her cottage on Kamaniskeg Lake to put it up for sale.
“I told her to not go alone. In fact, I told her many times before that she should not go up to the cottage alone, that she should have somebody with her when she’s up there at all times,” said Shelp. “I feared for her.”
