Brandon Tobin killed his grandmother after a drug-induced seizure. A judge will soon decide his fate
CBC
A sheet of white paper shook in Brandon Tobin's hands as he read aloud his message to the judge on Thursday morning.
With a deep breath and a loud exhale, he began to express the remorse he felt for a horrific act of violence brought on by intravenous cocaine use and a neurological disorder one night four years ago.
The combination left his 82-year-old St. John's grandmother dead on the floor and a family forever shocked.
"She meant the world to all of us and I would do anything to hug her and tell her how much I miss her," Tobin told the court.
Mildred Brake spent March 16, 2022, dancing the night away.
She was at a St. Patrick's Day party, where she didn't leave the dance floor until a GoBus showed up to bring her home late into the night.
She walked in her front door just before 10:30 p.m., to the centre city home she shared with her grandson, Brandon Tobin.
The young man had a troubled life, riddled with drug use and criminal convictions for violent offences.
Brake stood by her grandson through thick and thin, the court heard during sentencing submissions in provincial court on Thursday. Brake can be seen in previous court coverage, sitting behind her grandson as he was sentenced to five years in prison for attacking a man with a baseball bat in 2014.
Brake's loyalty to her grandson would end up a contributing factor in her tragic death.
At 10:35 p.m., Brake called her daughter — Tobin's mother — to say Tobin was having a seizure.
He'd been involved in a crash the previous summer, where he was riding a dirt bike and collided with a car. In the wake of the accident, Tobin began having seizures — which were more prevalent when he was using cocaine intravenously.
Tobin could be violent when he was coming out of the seizures, according to an agreed statement of facts in the case, and had recently assaulted his girlfriend in a state of post-seizure aggression.
Tobin's mother arrived at the house at 10:49 p.m., and found Brake lying on the floor, bleeding from her ear and nose. Tobin was nowhere to be found.
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