Man found guilty in the murder of his girlfriend
Judge dismisses claims Chang was in a drug-induced psychosis during the crime
A man who shot his girlfriend three times and left her to die in the parking lot of her mother’s Mississauga housing complex in March 2018 has been found guilty of second-degree murder.
Brampton Superior Court Justice Jennifer Woollcombe ruled Tuesday that Joseph Chang intended to shoot and kill Alicia Lewandowski, 25, in the early hours of March 5, 2018, dismissing the defence theory that Chang had been in a drug-induced psychosis.
“Despite whatever hallucinations and delusions (Chang) had experienced in the days before, when he fired those fatal shots at her, I find that he knew what he was doing and acted intentionally,” Woollcombe said.
Woollcombe noted that although there are gaps in what happened that night, the evidence shows Chan made the “callous decision” to shoot Lewandowski again even after she had called 911 to beg for assistance.
Chang did not render assistance, opting instead to drive away, leaving Lewandowski to die outside the townhouse complex near Rathburn Road and Dixie Road where she lived with her mother, the judge said.
The night of her death, Lewandowski called 911 to report that her boyfriend, Chang, had just shot her in the head, that she was bleeding, and that she needed help.
In the call, Lewandowski is heard pleading for her attacker to “stop,” says “what are you doing?” and then that her boyfriend had just shot her again, the Crown described in its closing submissions.
Before the call ended, Lewandowski told the dispatcher, “he’s trying to hide his gun.”
Lewandowski was shot three times including once in the head, back and abdomen.
Though Chang was on trial for first-degree murder, Woollcombe said she did not accept the Crown’s position that it was a planned and deliberate murder.
The court heard how Chang, who was facing serious drug trafficking charges at the time, had become paranoid that people were out to get him and had doubts about whether or not Lewandowski would give up incriminating information about drug activity at his Toronto apartment.
Woollcombe said that although Lewandowski went to visit Chang at his Toronto apartment for his birthday three days earlier, and he refused to open to the door and made bizarre utterances, including a threat to put a bullet in her head, “there is no evidence to support a conclusion that at that time he planned to kill her. He certainly wanted her to leave.”
“I do not accept the Crown’s submission that this was a relationship coming to the end,” the judge said.
The defence had argued for a lesser verdict of manslaughter, arguing that Chang — who was known to use drugs, including crack cocaine — was in a druginduced psychosis that triggered hallucinations and blurred his ability to form an intent to murder his girlfriend. Woollcombe rejected that theory.
Lewandowski’s mother, Mira Lewandowski testified that Chang and her daughter, a Humber College student who was studying esthetics and spa management, had a “volatile” relationship, and that she had become increasingly concerned the couple were drug addicts.
Chang is scheduled to appear in November for a sentencing hearing.