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It wasn’t hard for the inmates at the notorious Innes Road jail to hear the new cellmates arguing in Cell No. 2 on A-Pod after lights out on Oct. 17, 2020.
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It went on for 10 minutes.
And minutes before Kivi Bar Wari, 37, started to beat Bill Renwick, 49, to death, he called out to jail guards at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre several times, shouting: “I’m going to hit my cellmate.”
The inmates on the range heard Bar Wari’s calls to the guards, and then they heard the vicious, deadly beating. At first, it sounded like a struggle and it went on for several minutes.
The other inmates then heard what sounded like someone’s head banging off the walls, repeatedly. The inmates were right, for, inside Cell No. 2, Bar Wari was banging Renwick’s head off the walls and the toilet. He beat Renwick until he was unconscious in a pool of blood on the floor.
These events are revealed in an agreed statement of facts filed in court.
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Bar Wari was originally charged with aggravated assault. After Renwick later died, that charge was upgraded to second-degree murder.
Bar Wari pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. He will be sentenced later this year.
His defence lawyer, Biagio Del Greco, successfully negotiated the plea deal with the Crown and is expected at sentencing to question the actions of guards on the deadly shift.
Not only did Bar Wari call out to the guards several times before he beat Renwick, he called out to them afterwards.
“I hit my cellmate, we have a medical emergency,” he shouted.
The guards checked out the cell just before 11 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2020. The guards found Renwick face-down in a pool of his own blood. Bar Wari was sitting on a stool and told guards: “That’s what he gets.”
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While Renwick was found unconscious, his killer, Bar Wari, had no visible injuries, and his shoes and socks were spattered with his victim’s blood, according to the agreed statement of facts.
Arnprior’s Renwick, who never woke from a coma, was pronounced dead three weeks later at the Civic Hospital.
On the night in question, his killer, a homeless man, was at the Ottawa jail awaiting trial for attempted arson, break and enter and mischief.
Bar Wari was later acquitted of attempted arson but found guilty of break and enter and mischief.
Renwick was in jail for bail violations on a theft case.
Renwick had a history of mental illness and had Parkinson’s.
A forensic pathologist concluded that Renwick died of blunt impact to the head, and noted multiple injuries in his report.
Bar Wari will be sentenced later this year.
