As Ray Newman’s ex-girlfriend told the court details of the time he allegedly assaulted and choked her, family members of his ex-wife, Chrissy Predham-Newman — whom he was acquitted six years ago of murdering — listened intently.
Newman, 40, has pleaded not guilty to assaulting and choking his then-girlfriend at their home last September. Testifying by video from another room at provincial court in St. John’s, the woman said the pair had gone out for an early supper and were getting ready to go out for a few drinks and games of pool.
At the bar, they had some beer and shots, and decided to leave when the place began to fill up. Newman didn’t like crowds, she said, and things started to get tense. On the way home in her SUV, they began to argue, she testified, though she didn’t remember how it started.
“He was saying stuff that had no need to be said. Being ignorant and rude,” the woman told the court, testifying they were both drunk at the time. She decided she had had enough.
“I was fed up with being called down to dirt. I had had enough. I thought, frig this, I’m not putting up with it anymore. I started talking back, started standing up for myself,” she said, crying.
At home, the woman said, the argument escalated and Newman grabbed her — something he had done before. At one point, he was dragging her by the leg, trying to get her out of the house, she said, and then he tried to choke her.
“I remember him having me by the throat up against the wall. He had his hands around my throat. He was leaned into my throat, squeezing. My head was starting to drop and I was starting to see black. I got a breath of fresh air and focused on his face, then (hit him) in the nose.
“The amount of rage. I didn’t think anyone would want to hurt me so bad. To me, myself, that night I was fighting for my life.”
Newman let her go, she said, when his nose started bleeding. She got into the SUV and drove to the police station around 5 a.m., but returned when no one responded to her banging on the door. She said she pulled into her driveway and slept in her vehicle, awoken the next morning by Newman tapping on the window.
“When I sat up and he saw my face, he said, ‘I didn’t do that,’” the woman said.
She went inside the house and cried when she looked in the mirror, she recalled. When Newman went to work, she took a nap.
Police officers arrived at the house around suppertime after Newman called them to report a domestic incident.
“I asked him what happened and wanted to confirm he had called police. He wouldn’t say anything,” RNC Const. Neil Duggan testified. “I sort of pleaded with him, but he didn’t want to make a statement. I noticed a mark on the bridge of his nose. I asked him what happened and he said he had gotten punched, but he wouldn’t elaborate.”
Newman was charged and released to await a court date, with an order to stay away from the woman.
The woman was also reluctant to give a statement, another police officer testified, but relented. She was later escorted to Iris Kirby House and went to the hospital that night.
The woman’s injuries included bruising and swelling around her eye, as well as marks on her left cheek, and on her neck below her ear. She had vertical scratches on the centre of her chest, and abrasions on one knee, and she reported finding it hard to swallow.
On cross-examination, Newman’s lawyer, Brian Wentzell, repeatedly asked the woman how much she and Newman had to drink the night in question, and questioned her about her inability to remember how the argument started as well as the order in which things happened during the altercation.
Wentzell also asked the woman why she didn’t call 911, why she returned to the house and why she didn’t have bruising on her neck, if Newman did indeed choke her. He suggested the argument between the woman and Newman had started after Newman overheard her trying to buy cocaine at the bar, which the woman denied.
Outside the courtroom, Chrissy Predham-Newman’s uncle, Bruce Harvey, said he decided to attend Newman’s trial for his niece and in support of victims of domestic violence in general. He spoke of the emotional toll Predham-Newman’s death and subsequent events have had on him.
“I’m going to say something that may have some backlash against me and people may judge me, but I really don’t care,” Harvey said. “Through the whole process for the past 10 years or so, my life went in a very dark place. … Throughout that time, I got so low that I tried to take my life after all this.
“Just to speak to Ray Newman’s character, I came into court today and he walked past me and he smiled and he asked me did I bring a rope with me.”
As Harvey was preparing to speak to the media, Newman walked past and grinned at him.
Predham-Newman was found dead in her Airport Heights apartment in late January 2007. Her throat had been cut. Newman was charged with second-degree murder two years later. During his trial, a Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court judge ruled to exclude a portion of the evidence presented by police, saying officers made a mistake by not reading Newman his rights until 30 minutes into their interview with him, at which point he had already told them that he had been at his estranged wife’s apartment the day she died.
Newman was acquitted and although the Crown appealed, the decision was upheld.
Newman and Predham-Newman had a daughter, who is now 12.
“She’s doing great,” Harvey said. “She’s a lovely child. I watched Chrissy grow up from a child and now I’m watching Chrissy grow up again in her daughter.”
Newman’s trial will continue May 17. It’s not yet known whether or not he will take the stand.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
