Accused testifies man was violent prior to stabbing

Pinacie-Littlechief tells court Crowe choked her and attacked her cousin

The woman accused of killing Justin Crowe painted a picture for jurors of a man who had become angry and violent in the moments leading to his stabbing.

Tia Justice Pinacie-Littlechief, 23, is standing trial for Crowe’s second-degree murder, accused of stabbing him in the chest on Oct. 27, 2015.

Prior to the woman taking the stand on Monday, co-defence lawyer Ian McKay provided an opening address to the jury, advising them this is a case that will come down to self-defence.

Pinacie-Littlechief testified Crowe, 27, assaulted several females — among them the accused and her then-16-year-old cousin, Raina Joyea — in the time leading up to the stabbing. Pinacie-Littlechief said she was scared when she held a knife in Crowe’s direction, but wasn’t sure precisely how the fatal injury occurred.

“I don’t know if I lunged or if he came and pulled me in, but the knife went in,” she said.

Pinacie-Littlechief said she and Joyea were looking for someone to drink with when an old schoolmate of the accused answered their Facebook call. What became a seven-person group — including the accused and Crowe — drove to Crowe’s family’s farm on the Piapot First Nation after PinacieLittlechief’s sister kicked them out of the sisters’ shared Regina apartment.

Pinacie-Littlechief said everyone was getting along at first, but that situation later changed. She said tempers flared, and that Crowe reacted violently when another woman at the party got into a tugging match with him over a bottle of alcohol, ending with Crowe on the floor with the liquor spilling out.

Pinacie-Littlechief said Crowe assaulted the woman and that the two cousins ran outside after the woman once she fled.

The accused said Crowe followed and continued his assault on the woman, extending it to the two cousins when Joyea tried to intervene. Pinacie-Littlechief said Crowe, at one point, was on top of Joyea and was “banging her head” repeatedly off a concrete pad outside the house.

After Crowe went back inside, Pinacie-Littlechief testified she was left with a badly injured cousin and no way to call for help, and so decided to go back inside to get her phone. There, she told jurors, she ended up in another confrontation with Crowe during which he started to choke her. She said she reached into a utensil drawer and grabbed a knife, then took off after the subsequent stabbing.

“I was scared of him and I didn’t know what he was going to do,” she said of her thoughts at the time. “He’d just finished hitting my cousin’s head off of the cement outside and he was choking me.”

Crown prosecutor Mitchell Miller called into question Pinacie-Littlechief ’s version of events, pointing out discrepancies between what she told the court and what she told RCMP immediately following the incident. Miller noted Pinacie-Littlechief didn’t say anything about needing to retrieve her phone to get help, only that she realized she’d forgotten it inside.

Miller suggested Pinacie-Littlechief and Joyea could have simply left rather than return to the house, but Pinacie-Littlechief disagreed, saying her cousin was having trouble walking and that they didn’t know their way around the reserve.

The jury will hear the rest of Joyea’s statements on Tuesday.