‘A firecracker pop’: Lawyer Maria Mitousis recounts opening exploding package sent to her office

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This article was published 22/11/2017 (2659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than two years after surviving an explosion at her law office, lawyer Maria Mitousis still remembers the “firecracker” noise the bomb made as it sent shrapnel flying into her face and mouth, blew off her hand, burned her face, neck, arms and feet and seriously damaged her ear drum.

“I remember the sound, which was a firecracker pop, and just felt like I was reeling for a moment,” Mitousis said. “Everything seemed like it shifted… I remember feeling off-balance, feeling like I was underwater.”

As part of the attempted murder trial for 51-year-old accused bomber Guido Amsel, Mitousis took the witness stand Wednesday, calmly recounting what she did before, during and after the blast at Petersen King law firm on July 3, 2015.

She spent the morning golfing and planned to take that Friday off, but stopped by work to check on a few things, she said, when she saw a bubble-wrapped package along with other mail on her desk. The address label was handwritten, with a return address listing her previous law firm.

“I assumed it was something personal — usually I don’t get business letters in puffy envelopes,” she testified in response to questions from Crown attorney Chris Vanderhooft.

A zippered pouch containing a voice recorder was inside the envelope, along with a note that instructed Mitousis to press enter to listen to a recording that purported to “help your defence.”

Mitousis’s first thought was the recorder delivery was “weird,” and that she should ask a senior lawyer for advice, she testified. She walked to the door of her office with the suspicious package, then reconsidered. “That’s silly,” she told herself, before closing her door and bringing the recorder up to her ear.

“I decided to listen to what was on the recorder, so I pressed the button,” she said.

By the time the “puffy envelope” landed on Mitousis’s desk, her work to settle a business dispute between Guido Amsel and his ex-wife was virtually complete, she testified. Mitousis was representing Iris Amsel in a civil suit that aimed to recoup money Guido owed her after the dissolution of their business partnership following their divorce. Iris took legal action after Guido refused to pay her a previously agreed upon amount of $40,000 plus half of the cost of the equipment they had purchased together for their autobody business.

In spring 2015, the Amsels had agreed to sell the equipment at auction in July. They would divide the auction proceeds in half, and Guido would pay his ex-wife $40,000 from his share. All that was left to decide was who should pay the legal costs, Mitousis said, testifying that her work on the case was almost finished.

She’d been Iris Amsel’s lawyer since 2010, representing her in a dispute against Guido over travel consent for their teenage son. Guido refused to allow his son Kyle to travel to Germany, as he had done every year, out of fear Iris wouldn’t bring him back, court heard. The court ordered him to sign the consent form in that case. Later, when Kyle was 18 and starting post-secondary school in Alberta, Iris requested an extension of child support payments for him. Guido questioned whether Kyle was his son until a paternity test proved it, and he was ordered by the court to make the payments in December 2013 — the same month an explosion occurred outside Iris’s home in the R.M. of St. Clements.

Mitousis agreed with defence lawyer Saheel Zaman that her email communications with the accused had been cordial and polite over the years.

But she suggested Guido Amsel was unhappy when things didn’t go his way. At first, he didn’t agree to auction off the equipment — he wanted Iris to pay him for it instead. And when he did agree to the auction, he at first wanted to hold it in the winter rather than in the summer, Mitousis testified.

“I remember him wanting the matter to be resolved differently, that Iris was to have purchased the equipment from him at a value of $130,000,” she said during Zaman’s brief cross-examination.

“So I wouldn’t agree that he had no complaints or that he had no concerns raised.”

Mitousis is still recovering from the explosion after several surgeries, continuing physiotherapy appointments and adjustments made at work to accommodate the loss of her dominant hand as well as lasting nerve damage and weakness in her arms.

In the moments after the blast, “I didn’t know how badly injured I was,” she said. Now, she worries about possible retinal detachment from the debris that lodged in her eye, and her right arm “is in a constant state of some kind of pain.”

“I’m aware of it every minute of the day,” Mitousis said.

Guido Amsel has pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and several explosives-related charges. His trial continues in front of provincial court Judge Tracey Lord, who will later decide how much Amsel’s former lawyers will be allowed to reveal in court about their relationship with him.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay