Son pleads guilty to manslaughter in killing of father

The Windsor home where David Sura was raised was “pretty much like hell,” his younger brother told a Superior Court judge on Thursday.

Thomas Sura was “a very abusive alcoholic” who said and did “lots of hurtful things to all of us,” Thomas Sura Jr. said. David and Thomas Jr. lost both their mother and another brother to suicide, the court heard.

On Thursday, David Sura, 40, dressed in a jail-issued orange jumpsuit, pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge but guilty to manslaughter for having punched and kicked to death his father on June 20, 2018, after a night of heavy drinking.

“It’s my father, and I beat his ass pretty good … he might be dead,” Sura told a 911 operator that morning, according to a phone transcript read out in court by assistant Crown attorney Jayme Lesperance.

The only hint at what might have triggered the son’s deadly pummelling of his father came from that 911 tape. Estranged for years, Sura had visited his father’s home the previous night, and “we started talking too much.” He told the emergency dispatcher that he “beat him to an inch of his life ‘cos my mother died a while ago and he used to beat her.”

Sura, who described himself in court as a “pretty big guy” and longtime kick-boxer, conceded he had punched and kicked his father. The post mortem showed Thomas Sura, 66, died from “multiple blunt force traumatic injuries” to his head, face, neck and chest and he had suffered broken ribs and a lacerated liver.

Earlier on June 19, David Sura had visited a local office processing his application to go on disability. The year before, he had been in a serious ATV crash and had spent the following six months in a coma, leaving the hospital with a metal plate inserted into his skull.

Defence lawyer Rae-anne Copat advised Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas that Sura was still suffering the consequences of a “significant brain injury” sustained in that crash. The judge also made mention of fresh facial injuries her client was sporting, which Copat said was the result of “an altercation” at the jail the previous day.

Justice Thomas posed a number of questions to Sura, including whether he understood that he was admitting to having beaten his father to death. “I didn’t want him to die from it,” Sura replied.

Thomas Sura Jr., the youngest of three brothers, asked for and received permission to address Thursday’s hearing. He said that, growing up, “I became very good at hiding,” and that being found meant being beaten. He said David, with whom he is close, would step in to protect him from their father.

According to an agreed statement of facts presented by Lesperance to the court, the day that David Sura visited his father the two drank and argued and then drove to the Walker Road liquor store to replenish their alcohol supply. A witness described to police how the father had exhibited signs of intoxication, at one point throwing up in the parking lot of the LCBO outlet.

The autopsy following the father’s killing showed the victim’s blood alcohol level was triple the legal level for operating a vehicle.

When the police went to Sura’s auto shop workplace after the 911 call and the discovery of the victim, Sura was outside, flagging down the cruiser, still a little “unsteady on his feet” from the previous night’s drinking.

The judge on Thursday asked the younger brother about the suicides in the family and whether some of the events described in court — including the domestic abuse, the ATV crash and its aftermath — could be somehow connected to the fatal beating.

“I’m sure it had a lot to do with it,” said Thomas Jr. He said his brother “definitely was not the same after the accident.”