Barkhadle murder trial: Woman recalls brutal 2012 sexual assault

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She didn’t want to let him in, but Mohamed Barkhadle was begging for a place to sleep.

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He said it wouldn’t be a bother and he’d just lie down on the couch for another night of drinking.

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She trusted him, and the moment she let him into her apartment, he strangled her and then raped her while her two-year-old son slept in another room.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he testified Thursday.

The survivor’s terrifying account was heard at Barkhadle’s first-degree murder trial on Thursday, presided over by Ontario Superior Court Judge Kevin Phillips.

Barkhadle is on trial for the March 12, 2017 rape and murder of a 35-year-old single mother. (Her identity and that of her son are protected by a publication ban.)

His demon was addiction and his dealer was Barkhadle.

The strangulation was so brutal that it broke his thyroid cartilage. She was left dead in the bathtub while her two-year-old son was on her own for 10 days in 2017. She ate cereal off the floor in an apartment that smelled like death.

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The jury heard about Barkhadle’s monstrous past on Thursday when the woman who survived an attack by him in 2012, after letting him into her apartment, took the stand.

“He put his arm around my neck and kept squeezing… They were choking me,” he reminded the jury.

“I was digging my nails (into his arm) as hard as I could. She couldn’t breathe. It was all she could do.”

He passed out and when he came to, he was on the living room floor with his pants down.

Then, they held her by the throat and raped her, the jury heard.

He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. Her face was covered in brown and black dots and her eyes had all the signs of broken blood vessels. She cried in the mirror, or maybe in the hall; she can’t remember because it was a blurry moment, she bravely reminded herself.

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Then, in what she called a “mind-f —–r,” Barkhadle showed concern for her moments after strangling and raping her.

Specifically, Barkhadle said he was concerned about a bloody cut on the back of his head.

One minute he’s strangling and raping her, she said, and the next he’s giving her $20 to take a cab to the hospital for “medical care.”

Her hair was matted with blood, and while the woman thought she was going to die, she pretended she was fine to avoid another attack. She just wanted Barkhadle to leave, and he did after someone started banging on her apartment door.

He checked on his son and felt that he was dying. She told the jury that she couldn’t catch her breath and said her worst fear was that his child would wake up next to his dead body.

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She survived after calling her mother to take her to the hospital.

The jury also learned of an attack in 2011, when Barkhadle squeezed a woman’s neck so hard she thought she was going to break it.

It was August 2011 and she was in the hallway of her apartment when the predator offered her money in exchange for sex. When she refused, Barkhadle began dragging her toward her apartment.

She screamed, and he covered her mouth and said, “Shut the fuck up.”

He grabbed her by the neck, choking her as he lifted her off the hallway floor.

The ferocious attack was strong enough that a neighbor looked through her door, yelling at her to let her go. Barkhadle fled, and the woman ran inside and called 911.

“I was coughing up blood in my sink,” the woman recalled in a videotaped police interview shown in court.

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The murder case against Barkhadle is based on pathology, DNA analysis, bank and cell phone records, and security video from the public housing building in Mechanicsville.

Barkhadle has pleaded not guilty.

Deputy Crown Prosecutor Carl Lem told the jury early in the trial that he hoped the victim’s son was too young to remember the disturbing events.

The theory and police investigation, led by detective Sgt. Nicole McGetrick and Kevin Jacobs have since been adopted by the Crown.

The theory is that Barkhadle, at the time of his visit to the victim’s apartment, sent her text messages in an attempt to deflect suspicion. Then, once she let him in, he took sexually explicit photos of her with her cell phone, raped her, strangled her, and left her in the bathtub. She stole her bank card and closed the door on her way out, leaving the two-year-old to fend for himself.

The boy was still in a diaper when a maintenance man opened the apartment door 10 days later.

The boy was hungry but remarkably well physically, the jury heard.