Relatives of a Lower Sackville woman found slain earlier this week sobbed openly as the man accused of her murder was brought before a judge yesterday.
Rose Marie Brown’s son, aunt and brother were among the people who showed up at Dartmouth Provincial Court to watch as Kevin Glen Downing, 46, appeared to face one count of second-degree murder in connection with Brown’s death.
Downing, a carpenter by trade with no criminal record, sat quietly and without expression as Judge Alanna Murphy ordered that he be remanded in custody until his next court appearance on Nov. 26. At one point, he turned his head and looked toward the spectators, prompting jeers from members of the victim’s family.
“Don’t you f***ing look over here!” said Brown’s brother, John Edwards. He was promptly escorted from the courtroom.
“I don’t understand how he could sit there and hold his head up,” said Edwards as he stood outside in the hallway. “It’s unreal… I feel bad for his family as well, because they’re going to be at a loss too, but he should be held accountable for what he did.”
Brown’s body was discovered inside an apartment at 533 Beaver Bank Rd. on Tuesday morning. Police have not said how she died. Edwards said he works for a developer in Sackville and actually drove by the scene four times that morning.
“I saw a forensic unit there and said, ‘My God, someone must have died in there,’ not knowing that it was my sister in there,” he said.
Lydia Cain, Brown’s aunt by marriage and the legal guardian of her son, David, said she had met Downing on several occasions and that he seemed like “a normal person.”
A date for a preliminary inquiry will be set at Downing’s next court appearance on Nov. 26.
