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The vicious killer of his elderly Toronto neighbour has been sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 17 years.
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Standing just 4-foot-11 and needing a walker to get around, Teresa Santos, 75, was brutally stabbed and beaten in August 2020 in her Shaw St. apartment by Damien Allred, a burly construction worker and father of five.
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The motive remains a mystery, though his lawyer blamed his previous mental health issues and increased anxiety due to being laid off during the pandemic.
Santos’s decomposing body was found days later in a pool of blood, a pillow over her face with the imprint of a Puma shoe.
An autopsy revealed a knife lodged inside her mouth that had penetrated deep into her skull. She’d been beaten on her head, had five dislodged teeth and multiple rib fractures from being stomped on her chest.
Blood-stained footprints led police down the hallway to Allred’s unit on the same floor; video footage from earlier in the day showed him wearing Puma sandals. His DNA was found under her fingernails. Allred, now 43, was convicted by a jury last November of second-degree murder.
Superior Court Justice Suhail Akhtar called the slaying brutal and ferocious. “The knife was buried so deeply that it could not be seen when Santos was first found and it was only detected through a CT scan,” he said.
“By any stretch of the imagination, this was an horrific attack. An elderly, vulnerable woman was beaten, broken, stabbed and killed in the confines of her own home — the one place in which she was entitled above all others to feel safe.”
mmandel@postmedia.com
