‘I will cut her in pieces’

Woman shared threat with sister

A man who stabbed and slashed the mother of his child to death told her sister he’d “kill her and I will cut her in pieces and send her back to her country,” a jury heard Thursday.

Genet Kassa said she became quite afraid after Tamrat Gebere made the threat to kill Aster Kassa to another sister during a phone call to Ethiopia. Genet Kassa said she called her sister crying to relay the threat, before breaking down in tears on the witness stand.

Gebere, 37, has admitted stabbing Kassa, 32, to death and pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but the Crown is seeking a second-degree murder conviction. The Crown is attempting to prove Gebere intended to cause Kassa’s death when he repeatedly stabbed and slashed her 53 times in the neck, face, chest and arms. The couple’s 17-month-old daughter was in the apartment at the time of the July 17, 2010, killing. Kassa and her daughter had been in the subsidized Riverside Drive apartment for less than a day when she was killed. Aster Kassa was stabbed to death by her former boyfriend in a Riverside Drive apartment building.

Genet Kassa earlier told the jury Gebere came to visit her in Ethiopia a year before the killing, asking that she convince Aster Kassa to leave the women’s shelter where she was living and move back in with him. “When Tamrat was in Ethiopia, he said he wanted her to come back and he also said he missed his child,” said Genet Kassa, who lives in Addis Ababa.

“He told me to tell her that she left with my child, so tell her to move back with him. He was talking more like giving some warning,” said Genet Kassa. “She said ‘I will not come back’,” said Genet Kassa. “‘I have a baby now. I want to raise my child. I want to go to school. I will not live his way.’”

But while Aster didn’t seem interested in living with Gebere, she was willing to let Gebere see his child, Genet Kassa said. “When I mentioned these things to her, she said, ‘No problem at all. I can allow him to visit his child, no problem at all,’” said Genet Kassa. “Just for the sake of the child, they need or they have to meet. She said anytime he wants to visit she would allow him.” Later, Genet Kassa said, Tamrat called her in Ethiopia, this time, “very angry. He called me and said, ‘I work in the immigration division and I will deport her to her country,’” Genet Kassa said.

Kassa said her sister had earlier complained Gebere wanted her to live his way and wouldn’t let her talk to anyone. Kassa told her sister Gebere wanted her to be alone. But a shelter worker testified that Aster Kassa never told her that she was physically abused. Heather Jeffery, Kassa’s case worker at the Carling Family Shelter, said Aster Kassa had also been denied access to a priority housing list for battered women because she didn’t believe Kassa was in imminent danger or her safety was at risk.

The trial continues Friday.