Man convicted of shooting woman in front of infant

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This article was published 13/3/2014 (1984 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man who viciously beat and then shot the mother of his child has been acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of aggravated assault and discharging a prohibited firearm with intent to wound.

Jared Smoke, 24, learned his fate Thursday following a Court of Queen's Bench trial. The case was unusual in that both he and the victim testified the October 2009 shooting was accidental.

Justice Chris Martin rejected those claims but found the Crown failed to prove its case for attempted murder, a notoriously difficult charge to prove.

"(Smoke) meant to use the gun in the assault, and in doing so he discharged the gun but without specifically meaning to kill her," Martin found. "I am not sure that he specifically intended to kill her."

Smoke shot the victim, then 22, with a "heavy and cumbersome" sawed-off Ruger rifle inside her Furby Street apartment. The shooting happened in the course of a brutal assault, which included Smoke dragging her into a room "to beat her more." The gunshot caused "massive destruction" to the woman's forearm when she raised it in a defensive gesture, Martin said. The bullet grazed her cheek and fractured her skull.

After the shooting — which was witnessed by others in the apartment, including an infant — Smoke and the others fled, leaving the victim in a pool of her own blood and the infant alone on the bed.

Smoke will be sentenced later this year. He remains in custody.