Courtroom outburst: 'I didn't kill him'
Jul 02, 2009 - 03:00 PM
By Jeff Mitchell
WHITBY -- Even as he was being sentenced to prison with a judge's recommendation he never be released, convicted killer Paul Cyr forcefully denied any role in the murder of a trucker found dead in Pickering three years ago.
Mr. Cyr, who had stood passively for several minutes Thursday morning as Superior Court Justice Bryan Shaughnessy admonished him for the brutal murder, finally interrupted as the judge described how the killing had impacted the family of victim Donald Woods.
"I didn't kill him," Mr. Cyr said forcefully.
"The jury thought otherwise," Justice Shaughnessy replied.
"I didn't kill him!" Mr. Cyr repeated, more loudly.
The judge ordered Mr. Cyr, 52, to sit in the prisoner's dock as he completed the sentencing. While the sentence was a formality -- Canadian law dictates a life sentence with no parole for 25 years upon conviction for first-degree murder -- Justice Shaughnessy added his own recommendation that Mr. Cyr, now a two-time convicted killer, never be freed from penitentiary.
"There's little or no hope of rehabilitation for him ... he poses a serious danger to this community and to any community," the judge noted as Mr. Woods's family members, including his wife Nicole, looked on.
"It is my recommendation to the parole board that Paul Cyr should never be released from custody."
Jurors returned Tuesday afternoon with a verdict after deliberating a little over a day. They found Mr. Cyr of Montreal guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of Mr. Woods, a 35-year-old Brockville-area trucker found dead in the sleeper cab of his truck in Pickering on June 23, 2006.
Mr. Woods, who last spoke to his wife from a truck stop in Belleville on the evening of June 21, 2006, had been shot point-blank in the back of the head with a shotgun. His cargo, $40,000 worth of air-chilled chicken, had been stolen.
The Crown's theory was that Mr. Cyr, a fellow trucker who knew Mr. Woods, abducted and murdered the victim with the intention of selling the chicken. At trial jurors saw security video placing Mr. Cyr at the 10 Acre truck stop at the same time as Mr. Woods the night he went missing, and were presented with phone records indicating Mr. Cyr was in the GTA and in contact with a food-processing business where the chicken was sold that same night.
In his final address to the jury prosecutor Jinwon Kim acknowledged the circumstantial nature of the Crown's case, but insisted evidence pointed to the "irresistible" conclusion Mr. Cyr is the killer.
This week's finding of guilt is the second murder conviction for Mr. Cyr. He was found guilty of second-degree murder in 1988 for the stabbing death of a man in a botched drug robbery and released on parole in 2001. Jurors at this trial were not told of the prior murder conviction.
After an intensive investigation by Durham police, Mr. Cyr was arrested for the murder of Mr. Woods in October of 2006.
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