I Had No Control, P.E.I. Woman Tells Murder Trial

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‘I had no control,’ P.E.I. woman tells murder trial

The Canadian Press The Halifax Herald Limited November 11, 2004 HAMILTON - A woman told a jury Wednesday how she emptied a full clip of bullets into her ex-husband, beginning with a shot to his head. “I had no control, no control at all,” Ruth-Anne Willis, 41, said, her voice cracking. “I wasn’t there, it wasn’t me, I felt I was watching myself. I didn’t mean to do it,” Willis of Crapaud, P.E.I., told her murder trial. Willis has been testifying in her own defence about shooting and killing Russell (Rusty) Bailey, 42, outside his home two years ago. She admits she shot him, but has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. Willis, who was in a bitter custody battle with Bailey over their daughter, Torri, rushed to Ontario that August after the 14-year-old made it clear she planned to attend a private school in Oakville, Ont., against her mother’s wishes. At the time Willis had sole custody, but had been served papers to go to court. She decided on Aug. 20, 2002, to go to the Bailey home the next morning to try to talk Torri out of attending Appleby College. Court has heard the teenager and her father were planning to contest Willis’s sole custody order. Willis went to the Bailey home, with her baby daughter Brittany, now three years old. She pounded on the door, demanding to talk to Torri. Her ex-husband came out and told her he had not yet arranged a supervised visit. Their arguing became more heated, and she said she began to feel he was attacking her. She said she began to flashback to when Torri was a babe in arms when he had been equally abusive. “He pushed me off the stairs . . . Brittany was in my arms,” she told the jury. Willis said she put her baby back in her pickup truck and picked up a .22-calibre semiautomatic pistol she’d taken from her father’s home the night before. “It was like I was watching what was happening through a tunnel,” Willis said. “I pulled the trigger, it went off. He started to fall, and it appeared he was moving toward me.” She fired until the gun was empty, she said.