JURIS GRANEY Trial opens for man accused of stabbing his son-in-law

Roberto Robles was sitting handcuffed in the back of an Edmonton police squad car for 15 minutes when he suddenly broke his silence.

“I’m sorry very much. I’m sorry,” the 75 year-old said in broken English to Const. Josianne Sagar, the Edmonton police officer who had arrested him.

Earlier, as he handed an air pistol and a knife to Sagar, with the body of Robles’ son-in-law lying contorted in a pool of blood near the rear door of a Riverbend home, he told Sagar: “I shot him in the head.”

But it wasn’t the four pellets found in Armando (Mandy) Aspillaga that killed him.

Aspillaga had also been stabbed five times. Two of those were considered lethal and fatal.

Sagar was one of two Crown witnesses to testify Wednesday in Court of Queen’s Bench in the second-degree murder trial of Robles.

Robles earlier pleaded not guilty to the June 17, 2016, killing.

During his opening address, Crown prosecutor Mark HuyserWierenga contended Robles hated Aspillaga and that during a police interview the day after he was arrested, he told investigators he considered him a “piece of junk,” a “dog” and “lower than a rat.”

That evidence — a two-hour police interview — was expected to be played in court Thursday.

During the opening day of what is expected to be a 10-day trial, jurors heard that Aspillaga and met his future wife Flavia Robles at a wedding in 2009 in Havana. They married a year later.

In August 2011, the pair moved to Edmonton, living in a home in the Forest Heights neighbourhood.

Soon after, now expecting a child, the pair moved into a home near Whitemud Road and 53 Avenue. But the marriage disintegrated. Jurors heard that by the fall of 2015, the pair were still living in their home, but sleeping in separate bedrooms.

On the day of his death, Aspillaga left early for work at PCL in the Nisku area. Robles and his wife, Pilar, came to the home to look after their granddaughter. Arriving home after work that Friday, Aspillaga entered the home through a rear door and was “ambushed” and “attacked unexpectedly and suddenly,” Huyser-Wierenga told jurors.

Huyser-Wierenga told jurors Aspillaga was first hit by a “disorientating ” volley of shots fired from an air pistol, before being stabbed five times on the left side of his body. He also suffered seven or eight slashing wounds.

Aspillaga suffered a severed jugular and a 20-cm deep stab wound to the chest that penetrated his ribs and perforated his lung.

Sagar told court Robles appeared “somewhat distressed” when he answered the door, but led them without hesitation to the body. Pilar Roble’s 911 call to police was played for the court