Man pleads guilty to horrific fatal beating of disabled Vancouver senior
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2019 23:59:43 +0000
A man who was living in a Surrey recovery house has pleaded guilty to breaking into the home of a Vancouver senior and beating her to death.
On Thursday, Nicholas Wallace, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter in connection with the November 2018 slaying of Elizabeth Mary Poulin, 87. He had initially been charged with second-degree murder.
At the time of the incident, the grandmother of two was living alone in a one-bedroom, second-storey apartment in a low-rise complex at 3136 Kingsway.
The sweet-natured woman had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for a long time, resulting in extensive deformities, and was unable to walk without assistance, typically spending time in a wheelchair.
But despite her problems, she was mentally alert and fully able to interact verbally with others and had caregivers who would come to her apartment to help her.
On the day of the slaying, Wallace, who was living at a recovery house in Surrey and was on bail for a charge of possession of stolen property, had been drinking and consuming drugs, according to an agreed statement of facts filed in court.
He later told police that he was upset because the mother of his child wasn’t ready to get back together with him.
He met up with several friends and drank half a bottle of vodka. The group went to a bar in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where Wallace had two beers and smoked fentanyl.
In the early hours of Nov. 24, Wallace broke into Poulin’s apartment through the rear patio door that opened into her bedroom.
A short while later, a neighbour heard Poulin yelling “No! No! No!” and called Poulin’s daughter and left a voicemail telling her that her mother was shouting.
Later that morning, the daughter heard the voicemail and immediately went to the apartment where she discovered her deceased mother in her bedroom, on the floor next to the bed.
An autopsy later revealed that the victim had died as a result of “blunt force” head and neck trauma and that sufficient pressure had been applied to her neck to fracture her thyroid cartilage.
Wallace had also struck the elderly woman six to 12 times in the head with the cylindrical base of a garden decoration removed from a planter on her balcony, causing her to suffer a traumatic brain injury.
Fifteen of her ribs were broken and her hip was fractured during the attack and she suffered considerable blood loss. Bruises on her forearms indicated possible defensive injuries.
Vancouver police determined that Wallace had also searched through the bedroom drawers and elsewhere in the apartment.
After leaving the apartment, Wallace went back to a nearby rooming house where he had been seen prior to the break-in before heading back to the Surrey recovery house and then to a friend’s home where he told the friend that he had blacked out and thought he had killed somebody.
Two days later, he was arrested by police without incident. He told them that the last thing he remembered was being at a club, and said that when he was drinking he became a “klepto”.
Asked whether he had murdered Poulin, he said: “I’m not gonna confess to something that I don’t remember doing.”
At the recovery house, police found personal writings about what the disease of addiction or alcoholism meant to him.
“I would break into cars, sheds, more the less,” he wrote. “I would have walked in a house in the middle of the night just to take any valuable or wad of $ to buy my next drink or get that next high.”
During the court appearance on Thursday, Crown counsel Geordie Proulx told B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes that he and Wallace’s lawyer, John Turner, would be making a joint recommendation for 18 years in prison.
The judge ordered a report looking into Wallace’s Aboriginal background. A sentencing hearing is set for Feb. 28.