Ray Newman took the stand at his own trial Thursday afternoon, denying he had assaulted and choked his ex-girlfriend last fall after a night of sushi, drinks and pool.
In fact, he said, it was she who assaulted him by punching him in the face and head, and throwing things at him.
When the woman testified in March, the told the court she and Newman, 40, had begun arguing in her vehicle on the way home from a bar. When they arrived home, she said, the argument escalated and Newman dragged her by the leg, trying to get her out of the house. At one point, he put his hands around her throat and choked her so hard she started to see black, she said.
“That amount of rage. I didn’t think anyone would want to hurt me so bad,” the woman said. “To me, myself, that night I was fighting for my life.”
When it was Newman’s turn to tell his side of the story, he told the court he had simply pushed the woman off him when she woke him up by punching him in the face. They had been out drinking and playing pool, he said, when he had overheard the woman asking someone where to buy cocaine. In their vehicle in the parking lot, they argued about it.
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Woman testifies Ray Newman assaulted, dragged, choked her
“I said to her, ‘I’m not having it, I’m not having it in my life,’” Newman said. “She got pissed off with me and punched me in the face.”
The argument continued at home and ended, Newman testified, when he decided to go to bed. The woman went back out and returned around 4:30 a.m., he said, punching him in the face again.
“I pushed her off me,” he told the court. “She was on the floor next to the bed.
“We were arguing back and forth. She threw a few things around. A few pictures got broken and a knife was thrown. It seems silly given the situation, but she said, ‘How come we can’t get married?’ I said, ‘Seriously? Are you joking? I don’t even want to be with you anymore.’”
The woman left again, Newman testified, and he called the police.
“I just wanted her out of my life, that’s it,” he said. “I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I knew she wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I suspected she was coming back. I just wanted it to end.”
Newman said the woman returned and got a blanket from the house, then went to sleep in the vehicle in the driveway.
His call to police was answered — almost 12 hours later, even though it was deemed a Priority 2 in terms of seriousness, an RNC officer testified — but police said Newman declined to provide a statement when they arrived.
The woman did reluctantly speak to police, who escorted her to Iris Kirby House. She went to hospital that night.
The woman’s injuries included bruising and swelling around her eye, as well as marks on her left cheek and on her neck below her ear. She had vertical scratches on the centre of her chest and abrasions on the knee, and reported finding it hard to swallow.
Newman has not finished his testimony, and will be back in court June 1.
Newman was charged in 2009 with second-degree murder for the death of his wife, Chrissy Predham Newman, in 2007. Predham-Newman was found dead in her Airport Heights apartment. Her throat had been cut.
During his trial, a Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court judge ruled to exclude a portion of the evidence, saying police officers made a mistake by not reading Newman his rights until 30 minutes into his interview, at which point he had already told them that he had been at his estranged wife’s apartment the day she died. Newman was acquitted and although the Crown appealed, the decision was upheld.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
