Ottawa Citizen

Woman guilty of kidnap, torture

Crown seeks dangerous offender designatio­n against 27-year-old

- ANDREW DUFFY aduffy@postmedia.com

The Crown is seeking to secure a dangerous offender designatio­n against an Ottawa woman found guilty of kidnapping and torturing an intellectu­ally disabled man who was lured into danger on Facebook.

Laura Brahaney, 27, was found guilty Thursday of 10 criminal charges related to the kidnapping, robbery and assault of two men, one in Ottawa and one just north of Toronto, in September 2014.

The Ottawa man, developmen­tally delayed since he was an infant, was locked in a dog cage for 24 hours, then beaten, choked and left for dead in the woods near Ganonoque. He regained consciousn­ess and appeared muddy, bruised and crying, dressed only in his underwear, at the door of a nearby home.

Brahaney’s defence team, led by lawyer Michael Smith, served notice Thursday that it intends to file a charter applicatio­n to have the case thrown out for unreasonab­le delay before she can be sentenced.

Brahaney was arrested in midSeptemb­er 2014, which means it has taken more than three years to complete her trial.

Brahaney showed no emotion Thursday as Ontario Court Justice Hugh Fraser delivered his decision. The judge found her guilty on charges of robbery, forcible confinemen­t, kidnapping, extortion and assault causing bodily harm.

The 17-day trial had started with another accused, Jake Hopwood, 28, also before the court, but his lawyer was forced to withdraw from the case during testimony. Hopwood will be tried at a later date.

According to evidence heard at trial, the 25-year-old Ottawa man was lured into a meeting near his apartment on Sept. 4, 2014. He thought he would be hooking up with a woman, Tracy, whom he had befriended on Facebook that summer.

Instead, Brahaney met him and brought him back to his apartment building, where she was joined by two men. They entered the victim’s apartment, tied him to a bed and looted everything from his coin collection to his TV to his vacuum cleaner.

They shoved him into the back seat of a car, and forced him to call his father to make a large ransom demand. The kidnappers threatened to poison him and kill his cats.

The kidnappers then took their victim to a Cumberland home where he was locked up in a dog cage before being bundled into a car bound for Toronto. In a wooded area near Ganonoque, the blindfolde­d and gagged victim was taken into the woods, beaten, choked and left for dead.

Later that same week, in Richmond Hill, Brahaney took part in a second robbery, the judge found. A man was lured to a hotel room with the promise of sex, but was instead met by Brahaney and several co-conspirato­rs. The men bound the victim and beat him while Brahaney ate pizza in a hallway in a scene caught on closed circuit cameras.

The victim suffered a stab wound to the buttocks and a broken ankle.

In September 2015, Taevonne Mattis, then 19, pleaded guilty to his role in the Ottawa crime and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Brahaney’s case returns to court Nov. 8.

 ??  ?? Laura Brahaney’s lawyers plan to file a charter applicatio­n to have her case thrown out for unreasonab­le delay.
Laura Brahaney’s lawyers plan to file a charter applicatio­n to have her case thrown out for unreasonab­le delay.

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