|
WINNIPEG - As Brooke Olafson ran screaming from the naked madman who broke into her car, she feared she wouldn't live to see another day.
"I just remember thinking this could be it for me, this is how women die," Brooke Olafson told court.
Her attacker, Jonathan Myran, pleaded guilty yesterday to assault and mischief for a bizarre September 2005 incident his lawyer blamed on a toxic cocktail of steroids and antidepressants.
Court heard Olafson was approaching her car shortly before midnight after finishing work at a group home when Myran, naked from the waist down and yelling, ran toward her.
"I thought maybe someone was streaking, I had no idea," she testified. "I knew I had to get into my car. I didn't want a naked man approaching me for any reason."
Olafson quickly locked the doors as Myran pounded on the windows and leaped on the hood of the car. When Olafson tried to pull away, Myran jumped off the hood, smashed a rear window and jumped into the backseat.
Myran grabbed at Olafson while yelling at her to "f-ing drive," Olafson said. She escaped and ran back to the group home at the same time police arrived.
Court heard Myran was serving a conditional sentence at the time of the attack and had started injecting steroids nine days earlier.
Myran told court that on the day of the attack he also took Xanax to counteract the "fidgetiness" brought on by the steroids. He claimed he ran outside in his underwear trying to catch a taxi and then lost them on a fence while running from a man in a car waving a gun. He said the next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital.
Crown attorney Kusham Sharma urged Justice Murray Sinclair to sentence Myran to three years in prison, saying he was well aware using steroids could have harmful and unpredictable side-effects.
"He created an environment that sounded like something out of a horror film," Sharma said. "For a young woman living in an urban centre, this is one of the worst nightmares such a person can have."
Sinclair adjourned sentencing so he could see a report to determine what role Myran's aboriginal heritage may have played in his offending. |
