Drug dealer’s body chopped up, jury hears
Within a bluff of trees near Balcarres on the evening of April 30, 2015, coroner Maureen Stinnen stood while members of the Regina Police Service brought her a hockey bag and several large, black, plastic garbage bags pulled from a shallow grave.
Testifying Monday before a jury, Stinnen described opening the bags to reveal various body parts believed to belong to 34-year-old Reno Lee.
Among those parts were a torso, two severed arms, two legs — separated from the body just above the knee and bound at the ankles — and a severed head that was wrapped in white and red tape marked “fragile.”
She described clothes and various tattoos, including a dragon on the chest that matched one Lee was known to have, but couldn’t remember certain details such as how various bags were sealed.
“I don’t remember so much the bags, but I do remember the body parts,” she said. “It was very gruesome and a case I won’t ever forget,” Stinnen later added.
A jury began hearing evidence Monday at the trial for three men accused of first-degree murder in Lee’s death on April 16, 2015.
Andrew Bellegarde, 24, Bronson Gordon, 33, and Daniel Theodore, 34, are also each accused of offering an indignity to human remains by dismembering and decapitating Lee’s body.
Monday’s drama unfolded with the departure of yet another juror, bringing the total number of dismissals to three — all prior to any evidence having been called.
Last week, two jurors were excused after coming forward with concerns, resulting in a second selection process to take the jury and alternates up to 14.
The dismissal on Monday means 13 jurors will hear the case, set for a total of six weeks.
Following the latest dismissal, Justice Catherine Dawson provided remaining jurors with opening instructions on the law, the jury’s role and how to go about fulfilling its task. Co-Crown prosecutor Adam Breker then provided jurors with the Crown’s theory of the case and what evidence the Crown expects its witnesses to provide during the trial.
Breker said witnesses are expected to describe how Lee was, at the time of his death, a drug dealer who believed he was meeting with Gordon to discuss a business opportunity when he was instead ambushed in Gordon’s Regina apartment.
Breker anticipates Crown witnesses will describe how Lee was taken from that apartment to a house on the 1100 block of Garnet Street, where he was allegedly marched into the basement, restrained with tape and held for several hours before finally being shot twice in the head.
SOUNDS OF SAWING
Breker told the jury a witness will say she later heard the sounds of sawing coming from the basement and went shortly after with Theodore and Bellegarde to a treed area on the edge of the Starblanket First Nation near Balcarres, where Lee’s remains were later uncovered.
On Monday, the jury also heard from two police officers, including a member of the forensic identification unit who attended the Garnet Street house, an area in the city where various items were found in garbage bins and, later, the remote bluff where the body parts were found.
The jury was warned by both Dawson and Breker that their task will prove difficult at times given the graphic nature of some of the evidence, which is expected to include photos and descriptions from eyewitnesses as to what happened to Lee before, during and after his death.