Accused says woman asked him to choke her

HALIFAX — Christopher Garnier took the stand at his murder trial Monday, telling the jury that off-duty police officer Catherine Campbell encouraged him to choke and slap her.

Garnier’s lawyer, Joel Pink, opened the defence case by telling the 14-member Nova Scotia Supreme Court jury that Campbell died accidentally during “rough sex,” and called his client to the stand.

Garnier, 30, said he met Campbell at a downtown bar in the early hours of Sept. 11, 2015. He said they danced and kissed before leaving the Halifax Alehouse around 3:30 a.m. and going back to his friend’s McCully Street apartment.

There, Campbell, 36, asked Garnier if he was “into domination,” he said.

“I didn’t really say anything,” said Garnier, who had just broken up with his girlfriend.

He said he told her he didn’t want to have sex and she said: “That doesn’t mean we can’t play.”

“She asked me to choke her,” he said. “She told me it was OK and not to worry.”

He said he put pressure on her neck with one hand, but she asked him to squeeze harder, so he started using his other hand as well. He had both hands on her neck for 30 seconds, he said.

“I don’t think I was using very much force,” said Garnier, who choked back tears throughout his testimony.

“If she ever resisted, I would have stopped.”

They then moved to a pullout couch in the den, he said.

Pink asked Garnier to step down from the witness stand and describe what happened next, using a table to imitate the mattress on the pullout.

He stood directly in front of the jury and walked backwards toward a rectangular table behind

him, saying that he was leading Campbell to the bed and that she was walking backwards toward it.

He lay down on the table, saying Campbell’s head was at the foot end of the mattress. He leaned on his right side to describe how he was situated next to Campbell on her left side.

He said she asked him to slap her.

“I did it three times, fast,” said Garnier, adding that he wasn’t looking at her because, “I was uncomfortable and embarrassed about what I was doing.”

He said his forearm was across her neck, and that he felt his arm getting wet, and saw blood.

Garnier said he went to get a towel and when he returned, she wasn’t moving. He said he shook her shoulders and saw her open her eyes and gasp.

“I could hear air come out of her lungs,” Garnier said. Garnier said he then vomited. He said the image of Campbell lying motionless on the pullout couch was imprinted in his mind.

He said at the time, he stepped back and repeated to himself, “She’s dead.”

He has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of the Truro, N.S., police constable and interfering with a dead body.

Garnier told the jury he doesn’t remember putting Campbell in a wheeled compost bin, to dispose of her body near Halifax’s Macdonald Bridge.

He said when police first showed him surveillance footage from that morning of a man rolling a compost bin away from the McCully Street flat, “It was like watching somebody else in my body.”

Garnier said the next thing he recalls is looking up and seeing the pillars of the ramp leading up to the bridge, and then his friend Mitch Devoe waking him up the next day back at the apartment.