Vancouver Sun

Witness to fatal stabbing outside SkyTrain station weeps describing attack

- KEITH FRASER kfraser@postmedia.com twitter.com/ keithrfras­er

A witness wept in court Wednesday as she described an incident in which her good friend was stabbed to death outside a Burnaby SkyTrain station.

Victoria Heard was testifying at the trial of Taitusi Vikilani, who has pleaded not guilty to the Feb. 15, 2015 manslaught­er of James Enright, 28.

She told B.C. Supreme Justice Paul Pearlman that the assault happened after she and Enright had driven from her home to the Edmonds SkyTrain Station to meet a friend of hers.

After the friend arrived, she said she saw a shirtless man, who the Crown asserts was Vikilani, acting in an aggressive manner and hurling a racial slur — “f---ing goof-ass n----r” — at three black men at the entrance to the station.

When she began using her iPhone to film the incident, the shirtless man and another man, who the Crown asserts was Vikilani’s co-accused Jesse Sellam, approached her vehicle and started yelling at her, she said.

Heard said she asked the shirtless man if he realized he was speaking to a girl and the man replied, “I don’t give a f--- if you’re a girl,” before punching her in the face.

Enright, who was sitting in the passenger seat beside her, reached across to help her and then got out of the vehicle and went around the back of the car to confront the men, she said.

As she described how Enright was “just trying to protect” her, she broke down in tears.

A court clerk handed her a box of Kleenex and she inhaled deeply before continuing her testimony.

Asked by Crown counsel Steven Black what happened next, she said that Enright and the shirtless man had exchanged “maybe a punch or two” before Enright looked stiff and ill and fell straight back, hitting his head on the pavement.

“I saw blood. I saw it coming from his nose. The shirtless man then stomped on James’s face. And that’s when I ran over to push him away because I could see he was going to do it again.”

Heard, who tried unsuccessf­ully to resuscitat­e Enright, said she learned that her friend had died while she was giving a statement to police.

In an opening statement delivered earlier, Black told the judge that Sellam, who had been at a house party with Vikilani before the incident, had stabbed Enright before the confrontat­ion between Vikilani and the victim.

In December, Sellam was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaught­er. He had initially been charged with second-degree murder.

In his cross-examinatio­n, defence lawyer Patrick Beirne pointed out a number of inconsiste­ncies between Heard’s testimony at trial and her testimony at a preliminar­y hearing.

He suggested that his client, who has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting Heard, had not in fact punched her, a suggestion that Heard denied. Beirne’s position is also that his client, who he said had consumed an excessive amount of alcohol at the house party, did not stomp on Enright.

The main issue at the trial, which is to run several weeks, is expected to be whether Vikilani was a party to the offence of manslaught­er.

 ?? WAYNE LEIDENFROS­T/FILES ?? Yellow tape surrounds the entrance to the Edmonds Skytrain station on February 15, 2015, the day that James Enright, 28, was stabbed to death there.
WAYNE LEIDENFROS­T/FILES Yellow tape surrounds the entrance to the Edmonds Skytrain station on February 15, 2015, the day that James Enright, 28, was stabbed to death there.

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