Long road to justice for Tania
Family says the ordeal of another trial was worth it
BAILUN
WAS JUST five months old and sleeping steps away from his mother, Tania Cowell, when his father stabbed her to death one Saturday night in 2013.
It was heartbreaking for Tania’s family to see Bailun searching for his mother after social workers delivered him to his aunt and uncle’s home.
But she was gone, killed at age 36 by her boyfriend, Haiden Suarez Noa, who stabbed her 11 times on March 9, 2013, in their Stoney Creek apartment after, according to him, she said she was leaving him.
Cowell’s family have had to relive
the details of that night in agonizing detail in two separate trials over the past three years. The latest trial ended Thursday with Suarez Noa being found guilty of second-degree murder.
He said he happened to have the long-blade kitchen knife he used in his hands because he had intended to make himself a sandwich at the time. “I honestly thought when someone is stabbed 11 times that it would be a no-brainer” to convict them of murder. JULIE COWELL
Seeing Bailun’s eyes later search for Tania is something Julie Cowell, Bailun’s aunt and now his adoptive mother, will never forget. Julie and her husband, Tania’s brother Ivon, have raised Bailun, who is now six years old.
Tania had made Bailun her world. “We have video upon video of her hugging him.” She even wrote him letters to read when he was older.
Tania had a zest for life. Her family and friends say she had a really strong work ethic and was a great personal support worker — she was caring, loved meeting people and could talk easily with them.
She loved dancing and country music — several friends each now have one of her beloved country hats to remember her by. Above all, she loved her family and friends.
“You could never be miserable around her,” said friend Brenda Milburn. “She was always so goofy, so bubbly.”
Friend Jodie Manktelow-Ferreira says, “She was just very social. She enjoyed being around people ... We laughed all the time.”
The tragedy of Tania’s violent death at the hands of her partner hit everyone deeply.
They were determined to get justice for Tania and it finally happened late Thursday when the jury found Suarez Noa guilty of second-degree murder.
The road to reach this verdict was long, difficult, painstaking and heartbreaking on many levels for Tania’s family and friends.
A trial in June 2015 was declared a mistrial on the first day when the judge ruled the Crown’s opening address to the jury was too inflammatory.
Another trial set for November 2015 went ahead, but the jury found Suarez Noa guilty of manslaughter — a verdict that made no sense to family and friends who say he intentionally killed her.
At the time, Julie felt the jury had failed society and Tania by setting a dangerous precedent for domestic violence cases in Canada — namely, that you can get away with murder if you don’t like what your partner says.
“I honestly thought when someone is stabbed 11 times that it would be a no-brainer” to convict them of murder, she said.
Deputy Crown Janet Booy appealed the verdict. The appeal was heard in 2016 in Toronto, after which the Court of Appeals of Ontario overturned the manslaughter verdict and ordered a new trial.
Then there was another hurdle — Suarez Noa sought leave to fight the appeals court decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. But in July he lost that bid.
The new trial finally began this month on Nov. 12. Family and friends of Tania, supported by the Women Abuse Working Group (WAG), heard all the evidence all over again.
Each step was attended by Ivon and Julie, Julie’s parents, Tania’s other brother Eric and other family, plus
Tania’s close-knit friends.
“I blame the system for us having to do this again and again,” says Julie. “We lost her over and over and over again. That’s what it feels like to me.”
Manktelow-Ferreira said, “It’s disturbing that provocation can be used as a defence.”
Suarez Noa, a Cuban immigrant, testified in his trials that he lost it when Cowell told him she was leaving him, taking the baby, blocking his access to Bailun, and called him a “f---ing immigrant.”
He said he happened to have the long-blade kitchen knife he used in his hands because he had intended to make himself a sandwich at the time.
Family and friends don’t believe Tania would have said those words.
For one, she would never have deprived Suarez Noa of their son, insists Ivon.
Says Julie, “Nobody can corroborate the story he’s telling. Tania is gone and we’re going on the murderer’s
say so on what she supposedly said?”
Crown prosecutor Janet Booy referenced the many argumentative text messages the couple had sent each other that Cowell never once called him an immigrant, let alone a “f---ing immigrant.”
It was pure torture for the friends and family to sit through the horrific details of her stabbing death in yet another trial, says Julie.
“Painful. It is reopening wounds that have started to heal.”
“It was very difficult for Ivon and Eric to relive this again. She was their sister.”
But Julie said the ordeal of going through another trial was necessary to get justice for Tania.
She quotes something she saw once to explain the drive for justice: “The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.”