A woman was sentenced Monday to time served and one year probation after a judge found she had bitten off the lip of another woman during an attack described as unprovoked, vicious and disturbing.
In passing sentence on Hailee Marie Kowalchuk, 27, Provincial Court Judge Cassandra Malfair reluctantly agreed to a joint submission from Crown and defence counsels. Had it been her choice, Malfair said Kowalchuk would have been sentenced to four years in jail but when it comes to a joint submission a judge's discretion is "much more constrained" than if counsel had differed on what they saw as an appropriate sentence.
Kowalchuk had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault from the Jan. 25, 2019 incident but denied biting the woman's lip. But following a hearing on the matter, Malfair agreed with the victim's assertion that Kowalchuk did commit the act.
Summarizing the testimony, Malfair said the two had been friends and had gone out for drinks before returning to a home of a friend of the victim. The victim testified she was only moderately intoxicated because she had to work the next day and went to sleep on the couch, while Kowalchuk and the friend stayed up a little longer.
The woman said she woke up at about 12:30 a.m. to find her hands loosely tied behind her back and Kowalchuk on top of her. According to the woman's testimony, Kowalchuk threw the her to the ground, straddled her and started hitting her in the face while also pulling at her hair and eye lash extensions.
When the woman begged her to stop, Kowalchuk "strangely" said that because she had already gone too far, they would not be friends anymore and so, may as well continue with the assault.
The commotion awoke the friend, who was asleep in his bedroom. He went out and tried to pull Kowalchuk off and, unable to do so, he called police.
At that point, Kowalchuk grabbed the woman's bottom lip with her teeth, held onto it for awhile, then ripped up quickly and tore it off. Kowalchuk then got off her and the woman, bleeding from the wound, ran into the bathroom.
Police searched the home for the missing part of the woman's lip in the hope it could be reattached but could not find it. An implication arising from that fact was that Kowalchuk had ingested the lip, Malfair said.
The woman needed reconstructive surgery which was largely successful in restoring her appearance. She also suffered bruising on her eye, chin and face and a bump on her head.
A plastic surgeon found the wound was consistent with the lip being bitten off, Malfair also noted in recounting testimony from the hearing.
Malfair found the friend's testimony corroborated the victim's and noted that as the woman ran to the bathroom, Kowalchuk was chasing her. When the man stepped in to stop Kowalchuk, she grabbed his throat and knocked his glasses off.
Kowalchuk maintained she attacked the woman because had been tricked into consuming a drink spiked with a drug. When the woman refused to take her home, Kowalchuk said she instinctively grabbed the woman by the hair and threw her to the ground before blacking out then regaining consciousness as the man called police. Malfair said she did not believe Kowalchuk's testimony, finding in part that her "micro blackout" was "precisely timed" to coincide with the moment the woman's lip was torn off.
Malfair also found that Kowalchuk was not "deeply remorseful" and tended to blame others for her actions which include a past history of assault.
Following her arrest, Kowlachuk spent 16 months in custody. Based on time-and-a-half for each day served prior to sentencing, Kowalchuk had credit for two years in jail. She was also sentenced to a concurrent term of 60 days for leaving a residential treatment facility while out on a release order although she did subsequently complete several skills to success modules while in custody.
Terms of probation include a curfew for the first six months and an order to stay away from the woman and the friend. Kowalchuk was also issued a lifetime firearms prohibition and ordered to provide a DNA sample.
