Accused killer’s husband says she attacked him with knives
The estranged husband of a woman on trial for allegedly slashing and bludgeoning her lover’s wife to death described how his wife repeatedly came at him with a knife raised over her shoulder “much like the movie Psycho.”
Jason Ronald testified that his wife Gurpreet Ronald came at him with a knife three times between 2004 and 2013, including once just a few months before the mother of two was accused of killing Jagtar Gill on Jan. 29, 2014.
Ronald said all three times Gurpreet came at him with the knife were “eerily similar” — they’d start with a two- to three-hour argument in the kitchen over money or the state of their relationship and end with his wife chasing after him with a knife as he tried to walk away.
“I turned around to her coming at me swinging a very large kitchen knife,” Ronald said, describing one incident at a home they owned near Fitzroy Harbour.
Jason Ronald said that time his wife was armed with an 8-inch knife.
“The thick one, not the skinny one,” said Ronald who, like his wife, was an OC Transpo driver.
The couple is now separated and awaiting a divorce, Jason Ronald said.
He said each time his wife tried to attack him, he grabbed her arm and shook it until she dropped the knife. Jason Ronald said Gurpreet would punch him on the top of his head with her free arm after he restrained her.
Jason Ronald said there was a fourth time Gurpreet had armed herself with a knife in 2012, but the couple’s then nine-year-old daughter intervened before anything else happened.
“What’s with the f---ing knife mommy?” he remembers the crying child asking Gurpreet.
Ronald said the last time Gurpreet came at him with a knife was in the fall of 2013 after she learned he was “stepping out of the marriage” with another woman. Jason Ronald explained that Gurpreet had found a condom at the empty house near Fitzroy Harbour. They were also fighting about their finances, he said.
Jason Ronald said he found it “funny” Gurpreet was so upset: “You’ve been doing what you want for years, why do you care?” he recalled thinking at the time.
The jury has already heard Gurpreet Ronald had been having an affair with Jagtar Gill’s husband Bhupinderpal Gill since 2010. Gill, who was Ronald’s neighbour and also an OC Transpo driver, has also been charged with first-degree murder in his wife’s death.
The prosecution’s theory is that Gurpreet Ronald killed Jagtar Gill so the pair could be together. Both Gill, 40, and Ronald, 37, have pleaded not guilty.
Jason Ronald was called as a witness by Gill’s lawyer. His testimony is expected to continue Monday.
Jagtar Gill, 43, was slashed and bludgeoned as she recovered at home from hernia surgery while her husband and teen daughter ran errands. Her daughter discovered her mother’s body when she returned home. It was the couple’s 17th wedding anniversary.
On Thursday, the jury heard the girl has suffered from what a prosecutor described as “very serious” psychological problems since finding her mother’s body.
Bhupinderpal Gill’s father, Avtar Singh Gill, testified that the couple’s daughter has been hospitalized “many times” since the killing.
“Most of the time she’s with the doctor,” said Singh Gill. “I don’t know what they do, but they are taking care of her.”
A video of an interview with the girl was played for the jury. In it, she was accompanied by a therapist and asked questions by a lawyer for her father, followed by an Ottawa police detective. The girl, who can’t be named due to a publication ban, said she didn’t want to go to the store with her father, but her mother forced her to go so she could pick out snacks for her and her siblings.
Gill has steadfastly denied he had anything to do with a plan to kill his wife.