Man testifies he bound murder victim
A 33-year-old man told a Regina jury he owed about $800 in drug debt to Bronson Gordon when, in April 2015, he found himself in the middle of a situation that eventually left a man dead.
The witness — who cannot be named due to a court-ordered publication ban — testified on Wednesday at the trial for Gordon, 33, Andrew Bellegarde, 24, and Daniel Theodore, 34, each charged with first-degree murder in the death of 34-year-old Reno Lee and offering an indignity to human remains by dismembering and decapitating Lee’s body.
The witness said he was hooked on fentanyl and was trafficking cocaine and meth to help fuel his addiction. He said Gordon supplied him with the drugs he was supposed to sell, but he ended up in debt when he used some of the drugs and cash for his own needs.
He told the court Gordon texted him on April 16, 2015, looking to have him make good on the debt.
“He didn’t specify what it was about,” the man said, adding Gordon told him to come over to his Angus Street apartment.
Once there, he said Gordon directed him into one of the bedrooms in which another man — whom the witness identified as Bellegarde — was already waiting and armed with a .22-calibre sawed-off rifle.
He said Gordon handed him a 12-gauge shotgun and told him to wait, as there was another man who was supposed to be coming over. That man, the witness understood, also owed a debt.
“We were going to collect the debt off that person,” the witness said.
He told the court he wasn’t given the name of the man who came into the room about 20 minutes later.
“He’s surprised as hell to see us standing there,” the witness said of that man.
He said he and Bellegarde each punched the man once and frisked him, then guarded him in the room, adding the man remained compliant. The witness testified he recalled seeing Gordon on his phone and, soon after, two other people showed up. One of them, he said, was someone known by the street name “Buddha” — identified in court as Theodore.
The witness said Gordon directed them to take the man to another residence, and all but Gordon headed to a house on Garnet Street where the man was taken into the basement. The witness said the man talked about getting some money together to pay off his debt, but it didn’t immediately happen.
What did happen, the witness told the court, was that Theodore “showed up with the duffel bag.” He said Theodore pulled out a roll of tape and directed the witness to use it to tie the man up.
“It seemed like he was in charge at that point,” the witness said of Theodore, adding he believed it was because “Bronson wasn’t there.”
He said he eventually went outside under the pretence of going for a smoke, and just kept going.
“It kind of hit me that I didn’t really like where this whole situation was going …,” he said. “I didn’t know what else was going to happen after that point. I didn’t want to stick around and see what was going to happen.”
He told the court when he left that night, the man was still alive.
Wednesday saw a fourth juror excused for reasons not provided to the remaining jury, bringing the total number of current jurors to 12.