Khill trial: Tiny blood stains a sign of great force in shooting
Court hears expert witness reconstruct the final moments of Jonathan Styres’ life
AS HER WHEELCHAIR was pushed into the courtroom, Debra Styres looked up at an autopsy photo of her son on a giant screen, a twoinch hole blasted into his chest by a shotgun.
Debra’s mouth tightened, but she remained stoic. Even as that grim photo of Jonathan was replaced by another — shotgun holes through his arm and into his side — for the jury to consider.
Jonathan’s face was obscured in those pictures, but they are graphic and gut wrenching all the same. Difficult, likely, for the seven men and five women of the jury. Torture, almost certainly, for Debra.
The point of the images was to illustrate the forensics of those wounds.
What was the distance between the muzzle and Jonathan Styres? Where was he standing? Which way was he facing?
The day was spent on blood spatter — all of it Styres’ — and shotgun projectiles’ trajectories into the “target surface” — Styres — in an effort to reconstruct the final seconds of his life.
On Feb. 4, 2016, Styres, 29, was shot twice by Peter Khill, 26 at the time. That fact is not in dispute. Nor is the fact those shots — each one lethal — were the cause of Styres’ death. Also conceded by the Crown and defence teams — and raised by each in its questioning of potential jurors — is that Khill is white and Styres was Indigenous.
There is now a new agreement, based on testing done at the Centre for Forensic Sciences (CFS) in Toronto, that three screwdrivers found scattered at the scene each have Styres’ DNA on the handle.
Khill is on trial for seconddegree murder.
The jury has heard he and his girlfriend — now wife — were awakened at their rural Binbrook area home by a noise at 3 a.m. They looked out their bedroom window to see a light inside Khill’s truck in the driveway. He loaded his gun and went outside.
What exactly he did with that Remington 12-gauge pump action shotgun was at the heart of
Thursday’s evidence.
The Crown called retired detective Colin Hoare, a blood pattern expert with the Niagara Regional Police Service on the night of the shooting.
Schooling the jury in the basics of blood spatter analysis, Hoare explained he looked at “shape, size, location and distribution of blood stains” on the truck, in particular a cluster of 15 blood marks on the exterior of the rear passenger door and 74 on the inside of the front passenger side, mostly on the seat.
The spots were tiny, he said, indicating they had been spattered by a great force.
Hoare testified that Hamilton police had told him before he began his analysis that Styres had two gunshot wounds. And he said that later a detective told him there were no exit wounds. (The jury has not yet heard from the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy.)
Those bits of information along with his examination of the spatter, led Hoare to conclude the pattern was the result of “back spatter stains” made when blood spurts back out of its entrance wound. By that analysis, it would mean Styres’ was crouched low beside the truck and was “fully or partially turned toward the vehicle.”
But cross-examination by defence lawyer Jeff Manishen raised concerns with that.
Manishen pointed out that Hoare failed to follow the recommended
Jonathan’s face was obscured in those pictures, but they are graphic and gut wrenching all the same. Difficult, likely, for the seven men and five women of the jury. Torture, almost certainly, for Debra.
blood pattern analysis steps in one of the most reputable text books on the subject. (A textbook Hoare happened to have with him in the courtroom, as it turned out.) Contrary to the textbook, Hoare did not look at autopsy photos or reports to help him with his analysis. And the information he received about no exit wounds was wrong. One projectile exited Styres’ upper right arm and then immediately re-entered his body into his chest.
Manishen suggested Styres’ could have been twisted so his face was turned to Khill, while his torso was toward the truck. And one shot could cause the spatter on the closed door, another shot could cause the spatter inside the front passenger side at a different angle.
The trial also heard from Judy Chin, a forensic scientist from the CFS specializing in firearms.
She testified the distance from the muzzle of the shotgun to the arm wound was more than one foot and less than 12 feet.
For the chest wound the muzzle was less than 12 feet away, she said.
The gun was fitted with a muzzle attachment called “a Remington Turkey Superchoke” used to keep the shot in a tight, compact group as it travels, rather than scattering. It is typically used when hunting fowl, like turkeys, Chin said.
But in this case, it left neat, round holes in Jonathan Styres.