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Afghan immigrant often argued with wife before slitting her throat, daughter says
[Toronto Star] An Afghan immigrant who slit his wife's throat used to regularly get into such loud, abusive arguments with her that neighbours noticed and police showed up, their daughter said.Oh. Well That's okay, then. At least it wasn't a surprise. "It was really embarrassing. Sometimes they would just start in front of people," Tamana Khairi testified at her father's 2009 preliminary hearing. Her father, Peer Mohammad Khairi, 65, would call her now-slain mother Randjida names like "bitch" and "whore," but would never get physically abusive, Tamana said. Tamana Khairi's testimony from 2009 was read aloud for the jury at his second-degree murder trial Thursday. The couple would argue about their girls wearing "shorter clothes or seeing us with boys outside," Tamana said. The trial has already heard that Randjida Khairi, 53, defended their six adult or teenaged children's increasing Westernization, while it angered her husband. Randjida Khairi would periodically threaten to leave him, but would be held back by their Afghan culture, the daughter said. Her mother feared people would blame her if she moved out, saying "there was something wrong with her," Tamana testified. Leaving would also have damaged her father's honour, Tamana added. On the afternoon of March 18, 2008, Peer Khairi called 911 to report someone had "murdered" his wife of more than 30 years. Police arrived to find her body on a blood-soaked bed, with her throat slit through to the spine and five stab wounds to her torso. Khairi's lawyers acknowledge that he killed Randjida, but dispute the Crown's contention it was murder. Tamana Khairi painted a picture of a troubled home life for the couple and their six children who immigrated to Canada via India. Both father and mother had attempted suicide. Tamana herself once tried to harm herself, she said. Sometimes her father seemed crazy, she said. Once he deliberately poured chili pepper into his eyes, temporarily blinding himself. Another time he banged his head against the wall, making a hole, she said. He had trouble sleeping and would cry out in the night, waking everyone up in their three-bedroom highrise apartment on the West Mall. Once he fought physically with one of his sons, throwing him on a bed, prompting Tamana to call 911. Police took her father to hospital for overnight mental observation, she said. Several weeks before he killed her mother, her father had a car accident that left him "really disturbed," she said. "He would get angry in a moment." Posted by: Fred 2012-10-27 |
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