The Bible says the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, but in the late Otto Vass, it appears the two did so in the same mind.
When Toronto Police Constable Robert Lemaitre first met Mr. Vass early on Aug. 9, 2000, he had no knowledge of Mr. Vass's long history of mental illness and unpredictable violence. He and his partner, Constable Phillip Duncan, were answering a no-priority call for an "unwanted guest" -- police lingo for someone who won't leave -- at a west-end 7-Eleven store, and when they got there, Mr. Vass was in the store as advertised.
But he was amiable, the place peaceful, and the clerks going about their business: There was nothing to warn of what was to come.
So comfortable was Constable Lemaitre with Mr. Vass that when he asked him to come outside to talk, the big cop with the gorgeous dimples preceded him out the door, never dreaming that by showing him his back, he was making himself a target.
In fact, once they got outside, and Constable Lemaitre got a gander at Mr. Vass's face -- it was swollen and red, and he had a cut on his nose -- he put it together with the scant information he'd been given about an earlier fight and concluded that he was dealing with the victim of an assault.
Just minutes later, with Constable Lemaitre holding a note pad and Mr. Vass's health card in his left hand and a pen in his right, Mr. Vass demanded the card be returned and without warning "came forward and punched me in the face."
With that, a fierce struggle was on, and as it raged -- the night was hot, the participants sweaty and slippery -- Constable Lemaitre was soon reaching for his collapsible nightstick, hitting Mr. Vass about the legs, and once, after Mr. Vass had kicked the baton out of his hands and Constable Lemaitre saw him going for Constable Duncan's gun, actually kicking him in the upper thigh.
But nothing stopped Mr. Vass, Constable Lemaitre said: "He showed no signs of pain, compliance, whatsoever."
It was only when another two officers -- Constables Filippo Bevilacqua and Nam Le -- arrived to answer Constable Lemaitre's radio call for help that Mr. Vass was finally handcuffed.
Constable Lemaitre, gasping for breath, yelled for someone to call an ambulance because "I knew I'd injured Mr. Vass's legs" and began checking his injuries. It was as he ran his eyes up to the 55-year-old's face that he realized it "was blueish-purple, and I yelled that he wasn't breathing."
It was 1:01 a.m., or about 11 minutes after the 7-Eleven videotape captured Constables Lemaitre and Duncan first walking into the store at the College Street and Lansdowne Avenue intersection.
Constable Lemaitre, who with the other three is on trial, charged with manslaughter in Mr. Vass's death, was testifying yesterday in his own defence. At the time of this incident, he was all of 28, with not quite four years on the job.
The table was exquisitely set for Constable Lemaitre's evidence, his lawyer, Gary Clewley, having first called to the stand yesterday others who had brushes with the two faces of Mr. Vass.
First was Sharon Appleton, a pretty woman who was working as a nurse at the psychiatric ward of Mississauga Hospital 10 years ago when Mr. Vass was there as a voluntary patient.
Mr. Vass had been caught leering at a female patient who was undressing and twice refused the medication Mrs. Appleton offered him, but when she suggested a shower, it appeared to calm him.
His wife was feeding him pastries when she came into his room for another try at getting him to take his perphenazine, a drug often used with schizophrenics and the severely depressed.
By this time, Mrs. Appleton was a cagey pro, so she suggested that perhaps Mr. Vass might find more trustworthy a pill from his own supply, which his wife had brought to the hospital. She put a pill from that stash into a little cup and offered it up.
"Can't you see I'm eating?" he shouted, and "in the next breath, he said, 'I'm going to kill you.' "
He gave it a whale of a try: Mr. Vass "flew over the bars" of the bed, "grabbed me by the neck and shoulder," and in the cramped confines of the room, threw Mrs. Appleton down and began smashing her head against the floor until she lost consciousness.
Mrs. Appleton was badly hurt, suffering what's called a closed-head injury when her brain was sent scudding against her skull.
She bravely went back to work, but it was two years before she could force herself to walk past Room 2 again, and almost four years ago, unable to be the nurse she was once, she gave up. She has been deemed 70 per cent disabled and uses a cane, in part because of post-injury arthritis in her left knee.
Mr. Vass later pleaded guilty to assault and was put on probation for three years.
Then to the witness box came Judy Emans, an open book of a woman who 20 years ago was renting an apartment from Mr. Vass and who began by apologizing. "I had a stroke," she said bluntly, "and I get loud and I don't know how loud I get."
She shared her plain little flat with a 17-year-old girl who had babysat her children and had come to try life in the big city; in another was a woman and a baby.
On June 22, 1983, Ms. Emans was in her flat when Mr. Vass came to fix a leaky tap and replace the broken padlock on the front door of the house. He'd done the tap when she heard the girl screaming, "The landlord's doing something and I can smell gasoline!"
Mr. Vass, having padlocked the door, was setting the joint on fire. Ms. Emans herself saw him light the match that sent the place up and Mr. Vass "standing out there, laughing at us like it was a big joke."
They tried smashing a window with a chair; they had no phone to call 911; they fled to the basement. It was only the remarkable poise of the girl, who remembered the trap door she'd found one day while cleaning down there, that allowed them to escape.
Ms. Emans, who never had much, lost what little she had -- cherished pictures of her kids -- in the fire. Mr. Vass pleaded guilty to arson, and was sentenced to six months.
"In retrospect," Mr. Clewley asked, "do you think you did anything to provoke Mr. Vass?"
"No," she said. "The thing is, with Otto Vass, he was nice as pie sometimes, so wonderful, and all of a sudden he'd just snap like this and go crazy."