National Post (National Edition)
Victim may have been on knees when shot
Testimony at Hamilton murder trial
HAMILTON, ONT. • Jon Styres could have been on his hands and knees, in the muck of Peter Khill’s rural driveway, when he was hit in the arm by one of two shotgun blasts that killed him.
The testimony — and the haunting image it conjures up — came Monday at Khill’s second-degree murder trial from forensic pathologist Dr. Jane Turner, a consultant on the Styres’ case.
Khill, 28, is pleading not guilty.
But as devastating as Turner’s suggestion was, it was only that, a suggestion from one expert witness.
The forensic pathologist who performed the actual autopsy on Styres’ body, Dr. Allison Edgecombe, said only that “It’s difficult to determine how (Styres) was standing when shot.”
Edgecombe agreed with prosecutor Steve O’brien that the wound trajectory indicated Styres “was closer to, or even on, the ground” when he was hit by that blast, and that his body was lower than Khill’s — but she said that the difference could be because Khill is taller or was holding the shotgun up in the air.
Turner said her opinion, based on Edgecombe’s autopsy report, a blood stain analysis report and photographs from the scene and post-mortem both, is that the 29-year-old Styres was either standing but stooped, moving to a kneeling position or on his hands and knees when he was hit by a blast to the right arm.
But she also said she believes that was the second shot, and that his gaping chest wound likely came first. Edgecombe said she couldn’t tell which blast was first or second.
Both wounds were lethal. It isn’t contested, as Ontario Superior Court Judge Stephen Glithero and a jury have heard repeatedly, that Styres was shot dead Feb. 4, 2016, as he attempted to steal Khill’s aged pickup truck.
It was about 3 a.m. on a moonless black night. A parade of witnesses has described how this stretch of country highway just outside Hamilton was without street lighting.
And though just a couple of kilometres from a typical garishly lit intersection of big-box stores and the like, this particular section of Highway 56 is quasi-rural, with little development.
Khill’s wife, Melinda Benko, who was there that night, testified that the week before the shooting, while Khill was travelling for business, someone had twice tried to crack the remote code on the house door lock. She told Khill when he came off the road, and he changed the lock combination.
And on the 911 call an hysterical Benko made that night, Khill could be heard at one point saying that in the darkness, he saw Styres raise his hands and believed he was going to shoot him.
A screwdriver was found beside Styres’ body, the passenger door lock was punched in and the ignition column damaged, and he was wearing a glove. He had no gun.
One blast from the 12-gauge Remington shotgun entered Styres’ right upper arm at the back, exited in his armpit and immediately re-entered his body, tearing through the chest cavity.
Its path through his body actually intersected with the path of the blast that entered through Styres’ chest, both blasts fracturing ribs as they tore through his right lung.
Pellets from the arm shot ended up in Styres’ liver and kidney, and neither organ bled, which is one of the reasons Turner believed Styres was hit first in the chest.
Such a devastating injury to his chest would have caused his blood pressure to immediately crash, she said, and so when the pellets hit those other vital organs, there was no blood loss.
Styres had mud on his hands, knees and the tops of his shoes, something Turner testified factored into her belief that he could have been on all fours when hit in the arm.
But in cross-examination by Jeff Manishen, defence lawyer for Khill, Turner admitted she didn’t know, when she wrote her report, that the lock on the pickup had been punched — or that, as Manishen put it, Styres could well have knelt in the muck while breaking into the old truck, before the shooting even happened.
Turner was the last prosecution witness, with Manishen expected to begin calling his case Tuesday.