The father of the girl from Granby so often replied “I do not remember”, during the trial of the mother-in-law of the 7-year-old child, that the Court had to use great means to extract him. answers. The 32-year-old (who couldn’t remember his age) will return to the Trois-Rivières courthouse on Friday for observations on his own sentence.
The Crown asked the father to reread the notes of his police interrogation, view photos and watch a video before giving his testimony in the mother-in-law’s trial. The man didn’t.
“We can clearly see that the witness, not only did not do it, but he says that he does not want to do it”, declared the judge Louis Dionne while the key witness and the jury were absent from the courtroom, last October. “This morning, it was a total blockage,” he added. The father’s testimony took place behind closed doors, without journalists and the public present, but the media were able to obtain a transcript of his account when he pleaded guilty to forcible confinement in December.
In front of the behavior of the father, the lawyers of the Crown and of the defense agreed to watch – with him – the video of his interrogation carried out by the investigators of the Sûreté du Québec in order to “refresh his memory”.
“We will sit down, then we will listen to TV,” said the judge, adding that he “never experienced a situation like this”.
When the father returned to the courtroom, he attempted to overturn the decision. “Just to be sure, Your Honor, is it really mandatory that I watch this video? He asked in his small voice.
“Yes, absolutely”, replied the magistrate.
The father began to cry from the first seconds of the broadcast. The judge gave him a 10-minute break to recover.
“You asked me the question earlier”
Although he eventually listened to his questioning again, the witness continued to be uncooperative. The judge notes that he “slows down” when the lawyers seek to obtain clarifications to certain answers.
The father is also called to order because he talks to lawyers. “Well that, you asked me the question earlier,” he says to the defense attorney when the latter asks him if he has spoken to the doctors about the little victim’s sleep problems.
The father is also begging the lawyers because he does not want to see the photo of “the pile of slap In which the victim was coiled. He doesn’t want to listen to the 911 call either. The Crown played only a short excerpt to identify his voice and that of the mother-in-law.
Criminal record
He shines when Me Alexandre Biron, the defense lawyer, asks him about his criminal record. The man admitted to turning cannabis into oil and hashish and to transporting drugs. He also stole a case of beer from a convenience store in his early 20s and has a history of contempt of court.
“There is not a paragraph [dans le Code criminel] to say that we don’t want to incriminate ourselves somewhere? », Asked the witness in order to extricate himself from his quagmire. “But can I… just let myself know where are we going with the questions of my life to find out what I have…”
The witness could not finish his sentence; the judge ordered him to answer the lawyer’s questions.
After four days of testimony, the father realized that he had misled the court. “I just thought about it, I’m 32, not 31. I am sorry. ”
“Very muddled” memories
During his account, the father said his memories were “very, very muddled”. He remembers that his daughter tried to escape through her bedroom window twice on the morning of April 28, 2019. At nightfall, she ran away, naked, and rang the bell at a neighbor’s house. The father brought her home, however.
Furniture was placed in front of the windows of the child’s room to prevent her from running away again. But the girl moved a chest of drawers. The father then put on a shirt, the sleeves tied at the back like a “straitjacket,” and wrapped it in duct tape.
Sometimes I still wonder what went through my mind at the time.
The father of the girl from Granby
On the morning of April 29, he entered the victim’s room to give him his medicine and left for work. The mother-in-law sent her a text message at 8:12 am to tell her that the child had managed to release her restraint and that she had therefore “tied her up properly”. The mother-in-law begs him to come home, which he does at 9:27 a.m.
Arrived at his home, he gives a call to the child psychiatrist and goes to the bathroom. As he leaves, he notices that the child is no longer screaming. He goes to his room to untie her and offer to eat.
“That’s when I saw that things were wrong… the little one is… full of type … there’s nothing going on, ”he said. The father calls 911. The doctors note the death of the victim the next day, in the hospital.
At the end of the trial, the mother-in-law was convicted of premeditated murder and forcible confinement by a jury. She is serving a life sentence and will be eligible for parole in 13 years. Four days after the verdict, the father pleaded guilty to a charge of forcible confinement, which saved him from going to trial.
Crown and defense attorneys will issue their suggestions on the man’s sentence on Friday.