Guilty plea in fatal 45-minute assault on young mom

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This article was published 05/03/2024 (550 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Thompson man has admitted he’s responsible for the brutal slaying of his girlfriend outside her Winnipeg home nearly two years ago.

Justin Robinson, 31, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the killing of Tessa Perry, a 31-year-old mother of four, on May 30, 2022.

Perry went grocery shopping and returned to her Maples-area home around 9 p.m. That’s when Robinson “became enraged with (her) for some reason,” Crown attorney Danielle Simard told King’s Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg Monday.

Robinson assaulted Perry in front of two of her young children, before putting them in an upstairs bedroom and resuming the attack. He hit her with a frying pan and stabbed her several times with a paring knife. Perry ran outside. Witnesses saw Robinson strike her 15 to 20 times in the head and face with a table leg that had an exposed screw.

A witness placed the first call to 911 at 9:38 p.m.

“So, from beginning to end of the incident was just under 45 minutes,” Simard said.

Robinson “dropped the table leg and was described (by witnesses) as casually walking away from the scene,” she said.

Perry was taken to the Health Sciences Centre, where she was pronounced dead minutes later.

During a plea inquiry, Robinson told the judge his guilty plea was voluntary and he was giving up his right to a trial.

The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

Defence lawyer Mike Cook requested the preparation of a pre-sentence report and sentencing was adjourned to late May.

A day after the killing, 250 people attended a vigil where Perry was described as a loving mother who had moved to Winnipeg from Thompson to better her life.

“Tessa was a shining star who impacted everyone that met her,” Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, an advocate for marginalized Indigenous women, and also Perry’s aunt, told the Free Press at the time.

Robinson has four prior convictions for assault and one for aggravated assault, all but one of them related to domestic relationships. Court was told alcohol played a significant role in his crimes.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca