‘Please stop, I’m dying,’ man begged attackers, court told
Friends of murder victim beaten in alley say they were helpless to stop assailants
Lukas Strasser-Hird begged for his life as a group of people — including murder suspect Nathan Gervais — swarmed him behind a city bar, court heard Tuesday.
Two friends of Strasser-Hird, who also knew Gervais, said they witnessed the 18-year-old being attacked in an alley behind the Vinyl nightclub on 10th Avenue S.W.
Both Bryce Sunberg and Ty Paike said they were helpless in preventing the attack.
“Lukas was screaming in agony,” Paike told Court of Queen’s Bench Justice William Tilleman.
“He was shouting out ‘stop, you’re killing me,’ multiple times,” Paike said.
Paike said Gervais was at the “forefront” of the group attacking his friend, which he said included five to 10 assailants.
“He seemed to be at the front of the assailants, he was very active in participating,” Paike said. “He was engaged with his arms and his legs.”
Gervais is being tried for firstdegree murder in Strasser-Hird’s death on Nov. 23, 2013.
It’s the Crown’s theory that Gervais retrieved a knife from his car between an altercation at the front of the nightclub and the deadly encounter in the alley behind and stabbed Strasser-Hird.
Both Paike and Sunberg said they were about to leave the club when they discovered an injured Strasser-Hird being escorted by bouncers to the back exit of the bar to escape the initial altercation.
But they said when they exited the club, their friend was quickly swarmed and pinned against a dumpster.
Paike said he saw Gervais punch and kick Strasser-Hird, while Sunberg said he saw Gervais kick his torso.
Others were kicking and stomping Strasser-Hird’s face.
Sunberg said he tried to stop Gervais from going after his friend, but without success.
“I was trying to reason with him, he was just being aggressive,” he told Crown prosecutor Ken McCaffrey.
Sunberg said a group of 10 to 12 “were circled around him against this dumpster.”
“There were two men kicking his face and I was trying to pull them off and get between them and him, but I wasn’t very successful,” he said. “Lukas was begging them to stop and they weren’t answering ... he was just begging them to stop and at one point he told them, he had asked them, ‘Please stop, I’m dying.’”
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Alain Hepner, both witnesses said they never saw anything in Gervais’ hands during the attack.
The trial continues today.