Jury to decide if Suarez Noa intended to kill girlfriend
There is no question Haiden Suarez Noa killed his girlfriend Tania Cowell when he stabbed her 11 times in their Stoney Creek apartment in 2013.
The central question in his second-degree murder trial, however, is whether he intended to kill her.
Suarez Noa, 41, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and admitted stabbing Cowell to death in their Stoney Creek apartment on March 9, 2013, while their baby son slept on the couch.
The Crown’s position is that he intended to kill Cowell, and that makes it murder.
But his lawyer suggests none of the evidence in the trial proves Suarez Noa intended to kill Cowell after he “lost it” when she said she was leaving him, taking their baby, and called him a “f---ing immigrant.”
Lawyer Charn Gill told the jury in his closing submission Tuesday that the evidence shows Suarez Noa had no time to form the intent to kill Cowell, 36.
“He reached his breaking point,” Gill said, reminding the jury of evidence that the couple argued over house work via text messages while Suarez Noa was at work in Guelph earlier that day.
Crown prosecutor Janet Booy, in her closing, told the jury that “words do not justify killing someone” and dismissed the idea that Suarez Noa was provoked by Cowell’s words.
“Sure, he killed her when he was enraged. That doesn’t mean it was provocation,” she said.
“Rage is the explanation, not the excuse.”
Booy told the jury it doesn’t need “to believe those comments were made at all” because they are allegations and only according to what Suarez Noa testified happened.
She suggested that although the pathologist and blood splatter expert could not say which stab came first, the jury can conclude from their combined testimonies that the first stab was to Cowell’s back as she was running from Suarez Noa.
Booy pointed to the absence of defensive wounds on Cowell’s arms as evidence she couldn’t shield the blows because she was stabbed in the back first.
“Once (Suarez Noa) picked up that knife and plunged it in, he intended to kill her,” Booy said.
The additional nine stabbings beyond what Suarez Noa said he can remember “shows how much he wanted her dead,” Booy told the jury.
Gill, Suarez Noa’s lawyer, urged the jury not to be swayed by emotion or passion, but to determine the facts of the case based on reason and common sense.
Gill spoke of the tragedy of a young mother with her whole life ahead of her losing her life, and of a young child left without a mother. But he said Suarez Noa is not trying to avoid culpability or responsibility, because he has admitted to killing Cowell.
In his charge to the jury, Justice Andrew Goodman said Suarez Noa has had a previous trial, but said jury members are not to speculate about it or draw any conclusions.
“You must decide this trial on the evidence in this trial. Nothing else matters and that includes whatever happened at any other trial.”
Goodman is expected to complete his charge Wednesday morning and then sequester the jury until it reaches a verdict.