Bonnie Mooney’s story begins with a police officer saying, “I am sorry there is nothing we can do.” Those were the words of Constable Craig Andrichuk as he responded to Bonnie’s desperate plea for help in dealing with her ex-common-law husband, Roland Kruska. The police knew Kruska to be armed and dangerous (he had previous convictions, including manslaughter, sexual assault, and forcible confinement, and had been imprisoned numerous times). Kruska beat Bonnie time and again from 1991 to 1995, three of which resulted in her being hospitalized. Each time the violence escalated, until he choked her unconsciousness, and battered her with a stick in November 1995.
“If only they had done something, two people would still be alive,” Bonnie Mooney told me as we walked back to the courtroom on Thursday. The two dead were her best friend, Hazel White, and Bonnie’s ex-common-law partner Roland Kruska. Kruska was trying to kill Bonnie when he broke into her house and shot Hazel and Bonnie’s twelve-year-old daughter. He set the house on fire and then he killed himself.
Read this story in Canada’s Promises to Keep: The Charter and Violence Against Women, pp. 131-136.