MRU professor Janet Hamnett was bleeding profusely as she ran terrified from her southwest Calgary home after an intruder attacked her, she told the trial of a former student Tuesday.
Hamnett testified she awoke to a loud bang and then what sounded like an explosion before she got out of bed to investigate.
But before she even reached her bedroom door a male “presence” began striking her with a hard object as she fell to her knees and held her arms over her head to protect herself.
By the time her attacker had stopped and she was able to rush to a nearby bathroom, Hamnett said she was bleeding badly.
”There was blood everywhere,” Hamnett told the Court of Queen’s Bench trial of former MRU hockey player Matthew Brown.
Brown is charged with breaking into Hamnett’s Springbank Hill-area home in the early morning of Jan 13, 2018, and committing an aggravated assault on the professor, who suffered a broken right hand and multiple other injuries to both her arms.
He is also charged with breaking into a second residence that same morning.
Hamnett said her assailant was screaming incoherently during the assault.
While Brown was an MRU student at the time, Hamnett said she did not know him.
Under cross-examination, defence lawyer Sean Fagan asked Hamnett to describe the screaming.
“All I can say is it sounded like an animal,” she said.
“But not a human-type sound?” the lawyer asked.
“No,” Hamnett replied.
Fagan will argue his client was in such a state of self-induced intoxication as a result of consuming magic mushrooms that he lacked the general intent or voluntariness to commit the offence, so was in a state of non-insane automatism.
“Once I got close enough to realize the person was indeed naked and it was minus-20 out, I backed off."
While a section of the Criminal Code prohibits such a defence in personal injury cases, Fagan successfully argued in a pretrial motion the law violated his client’s Charter rights.
Meanwhile, Hamnett’s neighbour, Michael Crone, testified he awoke to the sound of his doorbell ringing repeatedly and discovered her outside.
Crone said after Hamnett entered his home he searched outside and found a naked man rummaging in another neighbour’s vehicle.
“Once I got close enough to realize the person was indeed naked and it was minus-20 out, I backed off,” Crone said.
He snapped a few photos on his phone as the individual moved to a second vehicle, before seeing he was being watched.
“He moved in front of the vehicle, turned and saw me, hesitated for a sec and then ran away at full speed,” Crone said.
He described the man, who was naked from head to toe, as “muscular.”
Brown is a former captain of the Mount Royal University hockey team.
A friend of Brown’s said he was acting out of character that morning after a small group got together for drinks where magic mushrooms were consumed.
Claire Erickson said the gathering had quieted down around 3:45 a.m. when a naked Brown ran from the home they were in, out into the wintry cold.
Twitter: @KMartinCourts
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
