A Surrey man who tried to kill his estranged wife has lost his attempt to overturn a ruling against him.
Ramiz Vukaj was convicted on several charges, including uttering threats and attempted murder after beating his wife with a metal stick in a Surrey basement suite six years ago.
He appealed to have those two charges overturned on Aug. 30 at the B.C. Court of Appeals in Vancouver.
In the case of the attempted murder charge, Vukaj argued that the evidence was insufficient to prove an intention to kill.
The victim of the attack cannot be publicly identified due to a court-ordered publication ban.
In 1997, Vukaj, then 31, arranged to marry the 12-year-old who lived in Albania.
They were married a year later.
Court documents say he was an abusive husband, beating her on the day she arrived in Canada, “and on a regular basis thereafter, often in full view of the children,” Justice Harvey M. Groberman wrote in his reasons for judgment.
After a severe attack in April 2009, the woman moved her kids out of the home and into a transition house.
At the time, he was charged and pleaded guilty to assault and threatening regarding that incident.
“In the very early hours of April 19, 2010, the appellant (Vukaj) attended the complainant’s home, and forced his way into the suite,” Groberman wrote. “He wielded a metal stick and beat her viciously. He inflicted three blows to her head, leaving her with a fractured skull.”
Vukaj argued that the trial judge errantly relied on the brutality of the attack to infer an intention to kill, rather than “subjective foresight and intention to kill.”
Groberman was not convinced.
“The appellant had gone to considerable trouble to find the complainant; he did not come upon her by accident,” Groberman wrote. “He broke into her apartment wielding a weapon. His attack was completely unprovoked. It was targeted at her head, and was unrelenting until she was unconscious.
“There was no error in the judge’s finding that the natural consequence of such a vicious attack would be the death of the victim,” Groberman wrote.
He found that the intention to kill had been satisfied at trial and dismissed the appeal.
The two other appellant justices agreed.