The day Allen Schairer died, Joshua Tomlinson arrived home late wearing new clothes, his then-girlfriend testified Wednesday as his joint murder trial in Sarnia continued.
The day Allen Schairer died, Joshua Tomlinson arrived home late wearing new clothes, his then-girlfriend testified Wednesday as his joint murder trial in Sarnia continued.
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Surie Landry-Caudle, who was living with Tomlinson at the time, recalled he came home on Jan. 26, 2021 with a brand-new pair of boots and a new baseball hat while a pair of shoes and a coat he was wearing when he left the previous day were missing.
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Tomlinson was also injured, she testified.
“He had a cut on the top of his left hand,” Landry-Caudle told the 14-person jury.
Tomlinson, 38, and Noah Brown, 31, both pleaded not guilty last week to second-degree murder and breaking and entering amid what’s expected to be a five-week trial into the death of Schairer. The 62-year-old avid photographer and former city parks employee was discovered stabbed to death in the bathtub of his Devine Street home on Jan. 26, 2021 after his car was found abandoned on the outskirts of the city earlier that day.
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Landry-Caudle, who’d been living with Tomlinson in row houses on Kathleen Avenue since November 2020, recalled reading a message that Tuesday morning from an account she didn’t know purportedly from her boyfriend. The message, sent around 5:30 am, included phrases such as, “Hey, babe, it’s me, Josh,” and claiming he was at a friend’s place all night playing poker and he’d be home at 6 am
The Crown told the jury it wasn’t looking to prove the message was from Tomlinson or that he was playing poker, just that Landry-Caudle received it. Landry-Caudle confirmed this and said she responded about an hour later, but Tomlinson didn’t arrive home until later that afternoon wearing different clothes, including boots she’d never seen before.
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“I do remember he had the box for the boots,” she testified.
In addition to the clothes, she later noticed he had a Bluetooth speaker, a new phone with the box and receipt, and some knickknacks such as a small hammer, all items she hadn’t seen before. Prosecutor David Rows showed a photo of a speaker to the jury.
Landry-Caudle said she helped him bandage his hand and, during a brief discussion, he said he injured it with a putty spatula while painting. He didn’t want to go to hospital for treatment, she recalled.
During cross-examination, Terry Brandon, Tomlinson’s lawyer, focused on their relationship, which was still in the honeymoon phase, and his troubled past. The moving company worker was addicted to fentanyl, had a long criminal record, including several commercial break-ins, and frequently disobeyed his probation’s curfew order, Landry-Caudle confirmed.
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Brandon said he had a bad-boy type and compared him to a toad with warts as opposed to a frog that turns into a prince after being kissed, but was also very protective of him, all things Landry-Caudle confirmed. The analogies brought a smile to her face.
But she also believed he lied to her at times, specifically about his drug use, and he was sometimes up to no good, she agreed. The jury spent the final portion of Wednesday reviewing a copy of his past criminal record.
It’s believed Landry-Caudle will still be on the stand when the trial continues Thursday. She and Brown’s longtime girlfriend, Jessica Hales, were the only two witnesses called Wednesday. Most of what Hales said was heard during previous days she testified.
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