Victim was blocked in bedroom as fire was lit, court told

According to Jessica Pangman, her last glimpse of Ryan Daniel Sugar was of him staring at her from the back bedroom of her small Regina house while, between them, a pillow burned and smoke filled the air.

Sugar’s body would be found several days later inside that bedroom, dead from smoke inhalation.

Pangman’s voice regularly trembled as she provided a Regina Court of Queen’s Bench jury with details about the incident, testifying she saw an assault on the 31-year-old man end with him being blocked inside a bathroom while the fire was lit.

Pangman said she, her aunt Colinda Lee Hotomani, and their acquaintance Gregory James Wolfe left as the house filled with smoke.

“He was alive when I last seen him...,” she testified of Sugar. “He was just staring at me and I just kept walking.”

All three are facing murder charges, although just Hotomani, 36, and Wolfe, 26, are currently standing trial for first-degree murder in the Oct. 4-5, 2016, death.

Pangman told the court she and Sugar were friends, and that he had come over earlier in the day. There, he did dishes while Pangman and Hotomani cleaned the house, and the three drank and used crystal meth together.

Wolfe came over later, she said, and they went to the liquor store for more alcohol.

Pangman said she was drunk and doesn’t remember anything more until she awoke in her bedroom, an angry Hotomani claiming Sugar had done something inappropriate to them while they were passed out.

She told the court Wolfe “took Ryan into the bathroom and had a talk with him and punched him around a little bit.”

She said the situation didn’t end there. After the men left the bathroom, the two women passed a large, full bottle of alcohol between them. Pangman said when Hotomani passed it to Wolfe, he hit Sugar on the head with it.

The blow caused a heavily bleeding wound, but the assault continued anyway, Pangman testified.

“Colinda was passing Greg like a pocket knife or something,” she said. “He started to slice up Ryan.”

She said she watched as a pleading Sugar was slashed on various places on his body as he backed toward the small hallway off of which the bathroom and back bedroom opened. Pangman said she didn’t want it to happen, “but I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

She said Sugar backed himself into the bathroom and closed the door. An ensuing battle between the two men — Sugar on one side, Wolfe on the other — ended with the door broken in two and Sugar using the broken part as a makeshift shield, she said.

“He was screaming for help,” she said tearfully. “He was just screaming for help.”

Pangman told the court she saw Wolfe, using her oven cleaner, spray down the area around the door and try to light it. When that didn’t work, she said Hotomani produced a bottle containing lice treatment and squirted it on a pillow Wolfe was now trying to light.

That time, she said, the fire caught. Pangman testified Wolfe pushed the stand holding the women’s large television to the bathroom door, effectively barricading Sugar inside. As the smoke grew heavier, the three decided it was time to leave. On the way out, Pangman said, she watched as Sugar, managing to make it past the TV, “jumped from the bathroom door into the bedroom.”

She got one last look at him before leaving.

“He was just standing there, trying to get help, I guess,” she said.

She told the court she and Wolfe returned shortly after — prior to the fire department’s arrival — to check if Sugar had made it out. Although she couldn’t see well through the heavy smoke, she said she thought he has escaped when he didn’t respond to her calling.

Court previously heard Sugar’s body wasn’t discovered inside the destroyed home until close to a week later.

Defence counsel for Hotomani and Wolfe are expected to crossexamine Pangman Tuesday.