Murder trial testimony recounts husband’s bloody attack on wife

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This article was published 20/02/2020 (2218 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In February 2016, Jonathan Wood pleaded guilty to a violent, unprovoked attack on his wife, and told a judge he was “ashamed” of himself.

Four years later, Wood is on trial for killing his spouse.

Wood, 37, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the January 2018 killing of 35-year-old Kathleen Wood.

In testimony Thursday, Tanya Wood told court she was at the St. Theresa Point First Nation home of her boyfriend, Scotty Wood, when his brother Jonathan and Kathleen came over for drinks around 5 p.m.

About four hours later, Tanya and Scotty had moved to a bedroom, when they heard loud arguing and the sound of stomping feet coming from the living room, she said.

Tanya said she looked through a hole in the bedroom door and saw Jonathan “punching (Kathleen) in the eye… She kept saying, ‘Scotty, Scotty, help me.’”

When Scotty made a move to check on Kathleen, his brother “told him to go back to his room,” Tanya said.

Sometime later, Tanya said she returned to the living room and saw Kathleen lying unconscious on the floor, a line of blood flowing from her eye.

“I tried to wake her up and Jonathan said to leave her alone,” she said.

Wood’s parents were later summoned, his father performed CPR, court heard.

Kathleen was taken to a local nursing station, where she was pronounced dead, due to blunt-force trauma. A pathologist is set to testify about the full extent of her injuries next week.

Alcohol-related beating deaths commonly result in manslaughter charges. The fact Wood is on trial for second-degree murder suggests prosecutors will argue the victim’s injuries were so severe and extensive death could be the only expected result.

According to court documents, Jonathan Wood, at the time of the killing, was bound by a recognizance, requiring he not leave Garden Hill First Nation (across Island Lake from St. Theresa Point) and have no contact with his wife.

In 2016, Wood pleaded guilty to assaulting Kathleen, and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. According to an audio record of the sentencing hearing, Wood was still on probation for a prior assault on Kathleen when he punched her face and body as she lay in bed.

She suffered a fractured arm, fractured orbital bone, a partially collapsed lung, and three cracked ribs in the drunken attack.

Police arrested Wood two weeks later.

In December 2017, a month before she was killed, Kathleen posted Wood’s bail as he sat in jail charged with assaulting a man.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca