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.
Denise Brake called 911 to report her mother was severely injured.
“My son had a seizure,” she told the 911 operator. “He had a combat seizure and he’s after attacking my mom.”
Tobin returned to the house while his mother was speaking to the dispatcher.
“Mom!” he yelled.
“What Brandon? Nan is hurt. You hurt Nan,” she responded. “You must of hurt her, Brandon. You had a seizure. You had a seizure, honey.”
Tobin was gone from the house by the time police, paramedics and firefighters arrived. Officers combed through the neighbourhood, and caught sight of him about an hour later. They chased him through backyards before detaining him on Anderson Avenue.
While being arrested, Tobin said: “It can’t be homicide. I don’t remember. My f–king nan. I don’t remember. I had seizures for the past month, since my accident. I can’t remember.”
An autopsy showed Mildred Brake suffered blunt force injuries to her chest consistent with stomping or kneeling. Heart disease was also listed as a contributing factor in her death.
The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary charged Tobin with manslaughter three months after the incident, alleging his actions led to the death of his grandmother.
Brake’s daughter, Annette Fallon, submitted a victim impact statement on Thursday, telling the court her mother mattered deeply.
“Her home was a place of comfort, connection and love,” she wrote. “She was the centre of our world and there’s a huge void where she once was.”
Tobin pleaded guilty to manslaughter by criminal negligence last November.
During sentencing submissions on Thursday, his lawyer, Mark Gruchy, urged the court to consider the actual act for which he’s pleading guilty.
The crime isn’t the physical force that led to his grandmother’s death. The crime is the decision to use intravenous cocaine, knowing it could have reasonably resulted in a violent outburst that would put his grandmother in grave danger.
Thus, he argued Tobin’s violent criminal record isn’t a truly aggravating factor.
That said, Gruchy acknowledged Tobin’s lengthy criminal record should result in a stiffer punishment than other manslaughter by criminal negligence cases. He asked the court for a period of incarceration between three and four years.
Crown prosecutor Kathleen O’Reilly is asking Justice Peter O’Flaherty to sentence Tobin to six years in prison.
“This case, like all homicides, is sad but what happened was foreseeable and it was preventable,” O’Reilly told the court, noting Tobin knew his substance abuse and seizures were a violent combination. “But he continued to use cocaine intravenously in his 82-year-old grandmother’s home.”
Both Crown and defence said it was difficult to find comparable cases across Canada when crafting their sentencing submissions. The facts of the case are unique, O’Reilly said, but part of a troubling pattern she’s seen in Newfoundland and Labrador in recent years.
“This is the third homicide that involves a grandson killing a grandmother in this jurisdiction,” she said.
Paul Campbell, 35, killed his grandmother, Eva Banfield, in Deer Lake in 2023. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, but has yet to be sentenced.
A 14-year-old boy in Mount Pearl pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in December, for killing his 65-year-old grandmother in 2023.
Each case, O’Reilly said, involved a grandparent who refused to give up on their grandson, and was ultimately killed by them.
“This trend is really, really troubling.”
Justice O’Flaherty will render his sentencing decision in the case of Brandon Tobin on April 30.
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