TORONTO

Lovely Lucita Charles could no longer bear life with her controlling live-in boyfriend Patrick Barrett, a downtown Toronto courtroom heard Wednesday.

She also broke the bad news to the devout Christian that she wasn’t having his baby as she already had a deeply-disabled child. Charles wanted him to leave their Harding Ave. apartment while he still wanted to marry her, Crown attorney Scott Arnold said as he outlined the prosecution’s second-degree murder case against Barrett, who has admitted he killed her but didn’t intend to do so.

After hours of argument, Barrett snarled, “F-- this s--t,” grabbed a hammer and fatally bludgeoned Charles. He wrapped her lifeless body and then plunged a knife into her chest, pinning a Bible page to her torso.

Barrett then stole her bank card and withdrew $200 from her account at an ABM before taking another woman on a two-day road trip. He was eventually captured by Durham Regional Police in Oshawa.

The vicious killing left Lucita’s severely-disabled son, Mataeo, now 10, without a parent in May 2010.

“This is not a whodunit. Patrick Barrett killed Lucita Charles but he wants to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, but we are asserting this is murder (intentional homicide), not manslaughter,” said Arnold.

The 41-year-old tool and die maker pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but the prosecutors Arnold and co-counsel Jill Cameron are instead are trying to prove that he meant to kill his former fiance.

“Lucita was unhappy in their relationship and wanted him to move out,” Arnold said in his dramatic opening.

She had stepped outside of her relationship and was involved with another man, but Arnold warned jurors that “she is not on trial here. He is.”

She suspected she was pregnant, but she actually wasn’t, said Arnold.

Charles adored her eight-year-old son Mataeo, who had cerebral palsy and require constant care as he couldn’t walk, talk, see or swallow.

“She said she simply wasn’t going to have another baby,” said Arnold of the May 31, 2010 “prolonged exchange” between Charles and Barrett.

After hours of heated arguments, Charles begged Barrett to “leave me alone.”

“F--k this s--t,” snapped Barrett before he snatches a hammer and swings it repeatedly at Charles’s head.

He wrapped her body in a multi-coloured duvet, ripped out a page of Bible and pinned it on her chest with a knife.

“He left her that way for others to find,” said Arnold, pointing to the killer in the prisoner’s box after displaying a large photo of the horrific murder scene.

Charles’ sister Sheran said Lucita met Barrett at a local west end Pentecostal church a few years before her death. Lucita was bothered by his controlling ways, especially his habit of incessantly texting her to come home, court heard.

The trial resumes Thursday.