Home attack victim pleaded with assailant to kill her, trial told

 

Family members leave court after Sarah John testified against Nathaniel O'Brien, the neighbour who allegedly choked her unconscious after stabbing her mother and grandmother to death.

STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR

Jennifer Pagliaro Staff Reporter

 

The surviving victim of a violent home attack pleaded with her assailant to kill her, fearing she’d be raped, a jury was told Thursday.
Nathaniel O’Brien is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Susan John, 43, and her mother, Saramma Varughese, 75, and the attempted murder of John’s daughter, Sarah John, now 23.
Sarah John said she was awoken by the “unnatural” high-pitched screams of her grandmother at their home on Rotary Dr. in northeast Scarborough in the early hours of Oct. 13, 2008.
John testified she and her mother ran to her grandmother’s bedroom on the second floor, where a man in a black balaclava was repeatedly stabbing the elderly woman.
John told the jury she called 911 from a phone in her grandmother’s room.
“I dialled the number and just held it in my hand,” John said, fearing her attacker would take notice.
When her grandmother screamed for her to call police, the attacker turned on John and pushed her to the ground.
When her mother stepped in, John said, she was also stabbed.
“I tried to stop him,” John said. But the 5-foot woman was no match for a man she said was at least a foot taller.
The 911 audio recording played in the courtroom features a few seconds of hysterical screaming before the line goes dead. A dispatcher can be heard redialling and getting the home’s voicemail.
During the attack, John was able to pull the balaclava up over one side of the man’s face, she testified.
She then identified O’Brien, a neighbour whose stares had made her feel uncomfortable on several occasions.
John said she was dragged to her mother’s bedroom where O’Brien told her to “shut up” and stay put. She said he called her by her first name.
John escaped down the stairs and out the front door.
As she ran down the sidewalk toward Meadowvale Dr., she heard her attacker in pursuit.
John ducked down a laneway between two homes that ended in a locked gate. When she turned, O’Brien was in the alleyway, she testified.
As John pushed to get past him, he got her in a headlock before gripping her throat with both hands.
“I was pleading for him just to kill me,” John told the court. “I thought he was going to rape me.”
John told her story in a steady voice, pausing once at the beginning, overcome and sniffling. Family members seated in the courtroom wiped away tears.
Cross-examination of John’s testimony by O’Brien’s lawyer largely focused on the timing of events, citing inconsistencies.
But John defended her recollection, saying that at the time of the attack, it “felt like an eternity.”
The trial continues Friday.