Court told of savage attack on Selkirk couple

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/08/2017 (2445 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Selkirk man who admitted to beating an elderly couple and raping the 85-year-old woman has pleaded not guilty, saying he suffered from a mental disorder at the time.

Justin Allan Bannab, 23, began his Winnipeg provincial court trial Tuesday with an agreement from Crown and defence lawyers that he broke into a Selkirk home and attacked the couple last spring. But his defence lawyer, Matt Gould, will argue provincial court Judge Sidney Lerner should find Bannab not criminally responsible for the crime — an extremely violent attack one responding police officer described as an “atrocity”.

Bannab is charged with aggravated assault, aggravated sexual assault and housebreaking.

The victims recovered from their extensive injuries after the attack but have both since died. A publication ban remains in place to shield their identities.

Judge Lerner heard Tuesday from four police officers who responded in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Their testimonies about how Bannab acted that evening and in the days that followed is expected to be key to the judge’s eventual decision. Under Canadian law, a finding of not criminally responsible means the individual was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the crime and could not understand what they were doing was wrong.

Just after 7 p.m. on April 3, 2016, Bannab entered the unlocked front door of a home on Manchester Avenue in Selkirk. He didn’t know the married couple who lived there. The 88-year-old man looked up from his kitchen table, where he’d been eating an evening snack, and asked the stranger to leave. Bannab knocked him to the ground and beat him with a broom stick until pieces of it broke off. The homeowner was hit about 30 times, his glasses and dentures went flying, and he could hear his wife hollering in the bedroom, where she’d gone to bed earlier.

Before the man reached the phone and called 911, Bannab had turned to the 85-year-old woman. Medical tests would later confirm the woman was raped, with DNA results pointing to Bannab, who had gone back out the front door before police arrived. The woman, who normally used a wheelchair, was left motionless on the floor in her nightgown, bleeding from a severe wound on her forehead that appeared as though her skull had caved in. A broken rolling pin handle was beside her, although investigators didn’t know what it was until they found Bannab with the other piece of the bloodied rolling pin.

Shortly after police arrived at the home to investigate, officers received another call, about a man kneeling in the middle of a street a few blocks away. It was Bannab. He’d knocked on someone’s door and asked the resident to call police, saying “he had done something bad,” Const. Josee Neudorf relayed during her testimony Tuesday. When she pulled up in her cruiser, she saw a man who looked like he was surrendering to police — on his knees, arms up, palms out. The defence suggested he was praying, looking up at the sky.

The officers who testified in court Tuesday repeatedly described Bannab as “calm, cool, collected,” and said he appeared to be aware of what was happening during and shortly after his arrest. They said they didn’t see any signs Bannab had been using alcohol or drugs, and didn’t have concerns at that time about his mental health.

Gould asked his client to stand in the prisoner’s box to hold out his arms so the court could see what Gould described as “hundreds of healed scars and burns” from his wrists to his elbows. Razor cuts, Gould said, and evidence of self-harm. Neudorf testified she hadn’t seen the marks when she handcuffed Bannab during his initial arrest, but it was dark and his inner forearms were smeared with blood.

Prosecutors Chantal Boutin and Geoffrey Bayly are set to continue the Crown’s case Wednesday. Due to a lack of available court dates in the meantime, the defence is set to begin calling evidence in January, when psychiatrists are expected to testify about Bannab’s mental state.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay