Woman says fear drove her in fatal stabbing

A Saskatoon woman on trial for first-degree murder says she spontaneously stabbed Patrick Dong after beating him on a rural road so that he couldn’t get up and come after her.

She said she knew Dong had a knife in his pocket.

However, on cross-examination, she admitted the man did nothing to make her fear him.

In fact, he was lying face-down on the road at the time, she said.

The accused, who cannot be identified because she was 17 years old at the time, testified on Wednesday that she didn’t remember how many times she stabbed Dong because she was drunk and high on methamphetamine.

She testified Dong was moving when they drove away, and she didn’t know she had killed him until she was arrested eight months later.

“I didn’t think that I was capable of killing somebody,” she said.

Dong, 37, died from excessive blood loss due to six stab wounds in his lower leg.

His body was found in a ditch on Hodgson Road, southwest of Saskatoon, on Oct. 23, 2016.

The accused said she didn’t intend to kill Dong, who she had never met before that night.

The plan was to leave him outside the city unless he confessed to stealing from her friends, she said. Things went sideways when she and another man started beating Dong with a bat and a metal pole after giving him one last chance to confess.

She said they tried forcing Dong back in the truck because the beating wasn’t supposed to happen, but he kept running away.

Crown prosecutor Michael Pilon told the accused they were chasing him because they hadn’t finished the job.

He said she clearly knew Dong could die from being hit with a bat, stabbed six times and left on an isolated road, where he couldn’t get help.

The point was to make sure he didn’t get up, and you accomplished that, Pilon said.

The girl started crying, prompting her lawyer to request a break in the proceedings.

Answering questions from her lawyer before that, the accused had testified her actions were entirely the result of the aggression she experienced from meth — a drug she said she’d been using since she was 16.

She was high when she stabbed Dong and for days before her arrest and police interview, the girl testified.

She said any inconsistencies between her testimony and what she told police was because meth had made her a “pathological liar.”

Court heard about the girl’s tumultuous life of running away from home and eventual addiction to cope with sexual and physical abuse.

She said she joined a gang because she had nowhere else to go.

Closing arguments were adjourned to Feb. 1.

Justice Shawn Smith will have to decide between manslaughter, second-degree or first-degree murder.

The Crown is seeking a first-degree murder conviction because the killing was committed during a kidnapping and confinement, arguing Dong was forced from a home and trapped in a truck.

The girl said Dong willingly got into the truck, while other witnesses testified he was dragged.