A Sarnia man convicted this year of second-degree murder and the family of his victim will have to wait a little longer to find out when he will be eligible to apply for parole.
A Sarnia man convicted earlier this year of second-degree murder and the family of his victim will have to wait a little longer to find out when he will be eligible to apply for parole.
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Joshua Tomlinson, 38, was to be sentenced Friday in Sarnia’s Superior Court of Justice for the 2021 slaying, but shortly after the hearing started the judge, Crown and defense agreed to move it to December as the full pre-sentence report ordered in May was not ‘t ready. A version of the report was submitted, but it hasn’t been completed because the veteran probation officer writing it has had a hard time lining up interviews with Tomlinson in the Sarnia Jail, the court heard.
Tomlinson, who also faces trial next year on a separate murder charge from 2021, appeared briefly Friday by video link from the jail, but the feed was lost after he had a private virtual discussion with his lawyer, Terry Brandon. The sides agreed to the adjournment in his absence.
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The family of victim Allen Schairer, 62, was also on the video link. They will file victim-impact statements ahead of December’s hearing, the court heard.
After a two-month trial featuring testimony from 15 witnesses, to jury convinced Tomlinson on May 16 of second-degree murder and breaking into Schairer’s Devine Street home after deliberating for four hours. The murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence, but with parole eligibility from a minimum of 10 years to a maximum of 25 years, Superior Court Justice Michael McArthur told jurors at the time.
That will now be decided in December. Schairer’s brother, Bryan Schairer, said in May the family had hoped for a conviction and he was pulling for the maximum 25 years. But he added there were no winners or losers as he still doesn’t have a brother.
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Brandon said at the time she and her client were incredibly disappointed, Tomlinson maintains his innocence and he would appeal the verdict.
A spokesperson for the Court of Appeal for Ontario said Friday an appeal hasn’t been filed yet.
Early in the trial, juries heard Schairer, a retired city parks staffer and avid photographer who was found dead in his bathtub on Jan. 26, 2021, with multiple stab wounds to the neck, head and chest, likely died within minutes.
The Crown’s theory was Tomlinson killed Schairer with a kitchen knife and cut his own hand after he and co-accused Noah Brown broke into his home.
Brown, 31, was a co-defendant in the trial for six weeks before leaving to enter last-minute guilty pleas to manslaughter and breaking and entering before a different judge. He was later sentenced to seven years in prison.
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Tomlinson, who has 82 criminal convictions, many for breaking and entering, said he walked from his Kathleen Avenue home to Exmouth Street looking for businesses to break into for drug money on the night Schairer died. Just before he got home, Brown pulled up in a car, cut his hand with a sharp object and intimidated him into helping fence stolen property, he testified.
During a marathon five days on the stand, he repeatedly denied being in Schairer’s house or killing him.
Tomlinson also faces trial next year for murder in the death of Sue Lumsden, a Sarnia senior stabbed by an intruder during a break-in attempt three days before Schairer died. Initially set for June, less than a month after the Schairer trial, it has since been pushed back to December 2025.
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