A Barrie man whose attempted-murder conviction was overturned on appeal was found guilty again of the same charge on Friday following a retrial.
“The circumstantial evidence presents a compelling picture of a man whose intent was not simply to cause bodily harm… but rather to kill,” Justice Michelle Fuerst concluded in handing down the judgment Friday.
In his latest hearing, 59-year-old Warren Mann pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, but not guilty to attempted murder.
A trial before Justice Fuerst on Oct. 12 consisted of lawyers’ submissions after the transcript from the first trial was tendered as the evidence.
Reference to the statements Mann made to city police at the east-end Barrie scene were excluded, following the appeal court’s ruling. Testimony he gave for the period that Mann said he had no recollection — mainly during the time of the physical altercation until the time he called 911 and what he said during that call — were also excluded.
No new evidence was presented at the new trial.
“The only issue at the retrial was whether the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Mann had a specific intent to kill,” which is required for an attempted-murder conviction, the judge told the court Friday.
Earlier this year, an Ontario Court of Appeal panel decided unanimously to overturn his original 2015 conviction on attempted murder, which resulted in a life sentence. It found the original judge made errors in that trial, which undermined the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof.
In reviewing the facts on Friday, Justice Fuerst described a brutal, prolonged attack that was prompted by unrequited love. Mann continued banging the unconscious woman’s head on the floor as he called 911, leaving her with life-threatening and permanent brain injuries.
Court heard the pair initially met around 2011, when Mann responded to her escort advertisement. He believed a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship was developing and he lived with her for a short time when he wasn’t away as a long-haul truck driver. He paid bills and he gave the victim and her children money.
Mann professed his love for her, expecting a relationship that would lead to marriage.
But on July 26, 2012, with his possessions in his car and expecting to move into her new home, Mann encountered complications. She had hesitated to give him her new address and used other people's phones to text him.
The two had an argument in her bedroom in which she hit him twice and slapped him, court heard. He pushed her and the two fell to the ground. Mann said had no memory after that point until he called 911. The woman has no recollection of the event at all.
The judge found that Mann began choking her and he banged her head on the ground at least 20 times.
At one point, the woman's daughter came into the room to find her mother not moving. There was blood on the floor and Mann stood straddling the victim. He then grabbed the woman by the throat and repeatedly beat her head on the floor.
The daughter and her boyfriend tried to pull Mann off the victim. The daughter then sent her boyfriend for help and she smashed a glass object somewhere on Mann's body.
The victim remained at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto in critical condition on life support until the following September when she was transferred to a rehabilitation facility. She had been identified as having a severe-trauma brain injury, blunt-force trauma to the neck with shearing to the carotid arteries, a fractured larynx that caused the airway to collapse, and a severely damaged liver.
Mann is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 10, 2022.
