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OTTAWA -- A jealous boyfriend admitted Tuesday to shooting his girlfriend in the neck with a semi-automatic handgun, leaving the woman paralyzed from the waist down.
Her three children were in the house as he called their mother a “cheating whore,” went into “his own world” and pulled the trigger.
Alvin Persaud, 31, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and turning the registered Glock he used for target practice on Cathleen Lavoie on July 22, 2008.
Lawyer Pat McCann said Persaud won’t oppose the Crown’s position of 10 years in the penitentiary when he’s sentenced next week.
Lavoie described to police how a furious Persaud got the gun, pulled the slide and pushed her down. He held the gun to her throat and pulled the trigger, prosecutor Robert Wadden said.
Her sons — aged 13 and 15 — came into the room to find her slumped on a blood-covered sofa.
“What have you done to my mother?” one of her sons asked.
One ran to get a neighbour while the other put a shirt on her wound as Persaud insisted he loved her and hadn’t meant to shoot her. He said it was a mistake.
“No, it wasn’t a mistake,” the wounded woman said weakly.
“I believe Alvin knew exactly what he was doing,” she later told police from the hospital bed where she’d spend months recovering.
“At the moment he pulled the trigger he must have had the intent to kill — he’s acknowledged that,” McCann said. “Within seconds he’s on the phone to 911 — distraught, crying, desperately telling them to get there quickly.”
McCann said Persaud — who disputes Lavoie’s account of their relationship — was drinking that night and his actions are related to alcoholism.
Lavoie, 43, said Persaud could handle the Jack Daniels he’d been drinking but “things just started getting worse” for the couple, who’d met five months earlier at a Canadian Tire where both worked.
Persaud was possessive and obsessed with her having his baby. She didn’t want to have another child.
He got angry when she mentioned a former boyfriend and accused her of still loving him. He wanted her to send her children away.
On the night of the shooting, he “went nuts” and stormed out when she was talking about male singers she liked. When he came back he said he couldn’t forgive her but, she said, she never thought he was going to shoot her.
megan.gillis@sunmedia.ca