Accused admits to hammering roommate
Daniel Ruff tells Kelowna court he was defending himself after Warren Welters threw him on floor and began choking him
The Kelowna man accused of killing his roommate has admitted he did it.
Daniel Ruff, 65, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 51-year-old Warren Welters, to which he pleaded not guilty.
The two of them had been living in an upstairs suite at 941 Bernard Ave. and frequently argued about bills, which they split.
Three weeks before the fatal incident, Ruff and Welters had a physical altercation, a Kelowna court heard Wednesday.
“I had some money missing from my room and . . . I thought he might have taken it,” said Ruff. “He ended up jumping me, and he put me on the floor and started choking me. I managed to wiggle and squirm and get out of it.”
On June 14, 2015, Ruff had been on the front porch, drinking beer with friends.
That evening, he told the jury he went upstairs to go to the bathroom and get food for a barbecue.
When he got to the top of the stairs, Welters was standing in the doorway of his bedroom.
“I was surprised to see him standing there and I said, ‘Why do you have to be such an asshole?’” said Ruff, adding he was referring to an incident earlier that day when Welters had called one of Ruff’s guests a whore. “He said ‘f . . . you,’ (and) I said ‘f . . . you too,’” said Ruff. Then, Ruff said, Welters jumped him and put him on the floor.
“He was choking the living shit out of me. I was scared for my life.” Ruff said he reached for a hammer in a nearby cabinet. “I took a swing and I missed him,” he said. “We struggled in his room and I hit him on the side of the head, and he just came back at me and I was gonna fight for my life with this guy. He came at me again, his hands around my neck, and I hit him again, and then he fell and I hit him rapidly three more times.”
But the mayor doesn’t want to see the valuable soil all used to grow pot in the name of profit.
“I do not want Delta to be the potgrowing capital of Canada,” she said. “I mean, we’ve got 22,000 acres of pretty great land that grows things all year round. And if it’s going to be allowed on all those acres, well, I don’t know if that’s the direction we should be going.”
Growing marijuana on agricultural land would likely mean big profits for farmers, but it could also create big problems for food security in the region, Jackson said.
Village Farms, which grows tomatoes in Delta, has announced plans to convert one of its greenhouses for marijuana cultivation. The company said in a release that cannabis is expected to be a “substantially more profitable” crop.
Village Farms CEO Michael DeGiglio said he knows some politicians are against the move, but he doesn’t think their justification makes sense.
“It’s an agricultural crop,” he said in an interview. “I look at us as farmers. We’ve always been farmers . . . . We’re not the ones who made a certain crop legal. We’re just reacting as a business.”
Jackson said she wants to see the provincial rules provide clarity around where cannabis can be grown and would prefer to see the rules favour warehouses over farmland when it comes to cultivation.