Crown calls crack addict to court
Ann Robitaille couldn’t sit still on the witness stand, and her testimony was anything but steady.
The crack addict who turns tricks to feed her addiction was called to court by the Crown Thursday in hopes she could corroborate parts of a key confession a man gave police in the 2010 axe killing of Jennifer Stewart, 36.
In four, ever-changing interviews with Ottawa police, Adrian “Mook” Daou, a 24-year-old aspiring rapper looking for fame, claimed he killed Stewart, a frail, drug-addled aboriginal sex-trade worker who weighed only 80 pounds.
Daou, a Vanier drug dealer and dishwasher, said he killed her in a surprise attack in a Vanier parking lot the night of Aug. 19, 2010, to gain notoriety to launch his dream career as a “billionaire rap star.” Daou, charged with first-degree murder, has pleaded not guilty.
Police had no solid leads on the case when a suicidal Daou, then in segregation at the Innes Road jail on drug charges and under a psychiatrist’s care, confessed after Stewart’s body was found facedown in an Alice Street parking lot.
But, as the jury has heard, he told wildly different versions to police.
Daou initially told police he used a military knife when, in fact, Stewart was killed with an axe, and he originally said he got rid of the weapon himself. But in a second interview the next day, on Feb. 26, 2013, he said it was his father who got rid of it, even detailing how his dad dismantled it and put it in the garbage.
Police and prosecutors have been unable to interview the accused killer’s father about that key detail and court has heard that the lead detective took no other steps to reach the witness beyond leaving a single voice mail.
In his confessions, in which he gives glaring contradictions, Daou told police about other crimes he’s done, including an attack on another sex-trade worker.
On Thursday at Daou’s first-degree murder trial, Robitaille, 37, testified that she was attacked in May 2010 by Daou in old Hull moments after a sex-for-drugs deal near a darkened parking lot. In his confession, Daou told police that he attacked the prostitute whose street name was Harmony. He said he hit her with a rock in a surprise attack from behind and then kicked her in the head at least a dozen times with the hopes of killing her.
Robitaille testified on Thursday that Daou attacked her with a “decent-sized” rock, first from behind, then from the left, and after she had fallen down. Then she revised her story again, saying she was hit not while walking but when she was sitting on a rock or a stump and about to smoke crack. She didn’t mention kicks to her head during her testimony.
During her testimony, Robitaille identified her attacker, saying, “It’s the gentleman in the box.” She testified that her attacker held up a big rock with two hands as he hit her in the head, and also said that Daou recorded the attack.
Scratching her arms constantly, and rocking back and forth, she testified she was bleeding for a “couple days” from the one gash to her head, but didn’t go to the hospital for two weeks because “it didn’t cross my mind.”
Asked by assistant Crown Louise Tansey how she felt after the attack, she said her life has been “one disappointment after disappointment — the story of my life. But I’m OK. It is what it is.”
Asked what she did when she saw her attacker holding up a rock behind her, the witness said she smiled.
“Why did you smile?” the prosecutor asked.
“Because I’m an idiot,” she replied.
She recounted that the attack was early in the morning. Daou told detectives he did it between 10 a.m. and 12 on May 4, 2010.
The trial, before Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger, continues Friday.