‘He shot Colten in the head,’ witness says
Saskatchewan farmer on trial for murder I WAS SCARED OUT OF MY MIND. I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.
BAT TLEFOR D, SASK. • A young Indigenous man gunned down on a rural Saskatchewan farm was shot in the head after the farmer accused of his murder instructed his son to go into the house and get a gun, and then walked into a garage to retrieve his own handgun, a jury trial heard Thursday.
“He shot Colten in the head ,” Be linda Jackson testified Thursday at Gerald Stanley’s second- degree murder trial into the death of 22-year-old Colten Boushie.
Jackson, 24, was one of four others riding in an SUV with Boushie when the group drove onto Stanley’s farm in the late afternoon of Aug. 9, 2016.
Jackson was also one of two witnesses to the fatal shooting who Thursday admitted lying to police or while under oath during Stanley’s preliminary hearing about some of the events surrounding Bo us hi e’ s death.
Another member in the group, Cassidy Cross-Whitstone, also admitting to lying about carrying a gun and breaking into a truck on the day his friend was killed.
“I was terrified. I didn’t know what to say. I was young, I was stupid, I’ ve changed a lot since that happened and I’m willing to face the consequences,” 18- yearold Cross-Whitstone told the jury.
“I was scared for myself and I was scared for the people there, that they might get in trouble, and I knew I was wrong but that’s just how I was feeling over there because I was scared out of my mind. I didn’t know what to say.”
He said that when he gave his statement to police 24 hours after Boushie was killed he was “half cut.”
He told police he was sober the day of the shooting. On Thursday, he admitted to drinking 30 shots of alcohol.
He also said he lied to police about a rifle that had been in the SUV. At Stanley’s preliminary hearing l ast April, he told a judge the rifle belonged to one of the other passengers in the SUV.
Jackson testified Thursday that she met up with Boushie and three others — Cross- Whitstone, Eric Meechance and Kiora Wuttunee — on Red Pheasant First Nation that August day.
She said they were drinking and drove to the river to swim but didn’t stay long because it was windy.
Cross-Whitstone started to drive back to the reserve, but was i ntoxicated and swerved off the road, causing one of the tires to pop, she said.
She testified she hadn’t eaten much that day and was feeling drunk and tired. She said she fell asleep in the SUV and didn’t wake until the vehicle stopped in Stanley’s yard.
Cross-Whitstone said the group was simply looking for help with the tire when they rolled up to the Stanley farm. “I wasn’t there to steal,” he told the court.
Stanley’s son, Sheldon, has testified he had been helping his father build a fence that day while his mother mowed the lawn. Sheldon said he and his dad heard an all- terrain vehicle start and thought it was being stolen. The pair ran toward the SUV and threw a hammer at the windshield as the driver tried to leave the farm.
Jackson testified that, after the window was smashed, Cross-Whitstone and Meechance got out and ran. Boushie, she said, appeared to be asleep in the front passenger seat.
Jackson said she heard a voice saying, “Go get a gun.”
“I’d seen a youngerlooking man go inside the house, walk inside the house and then shortly after that, meanwhile, the person that said, ‘ Go get the gun,’ went and grabbed his own handgun.”
She said the man went into a garage, emerged with a handgun, walked around the SUV and stopped in front of the passenger side, close enough to touch the vehicle. “He shot Colten in the head,” she said.
The only thing she remembers about the shooter is that he was an old man, Jackson testified. She said she couldn’t remember what he was wearing or his body type.
She heard f our shots — two she believed were directed at Boushie and two she believed were directed at Cross-Whitstone and Meechance, she testified.
The younger man who had gone into the house then came out with a shotgun, she said.
In her police statement, Jackson said the only person she saw with a gun was a female, that she didn’t know who shot Boushie and that she did not hear gunshots or see anything. She also did not mention an older male approaching the vehicle with a handgun, said defence lawyer Scott Spencer.
“I was lying to police,” Jackson said, adding that the officer she gave her statement to “made it seem like I did something wrong so I didn’t know how to answer him.”
She also said she was “still very intoxicated” at the time. When she saw a picture of Stanley, she began remembering things more clearly, she said.
Sheldon Stanley testified Wednesday he heard three gunshots in the family farmyard and ran outside to see his father standing beside the SUV looking sick with a gun in his hand saying, “It just went off.”
The trial is scheduled to continue until Feb. 15.