Putting pieces together: Court hears from party-goers at the Misha Pavelick murder trial

Witnesses at the Misha Pavelick murder trial are each putting their own piece of the puzzle into place as they testify.

Four more perspectives were drawn out in the courtroom on Wednesday, on the third day of the trial for the man accused of killing Pavelick nearly 20 years ago. The accused was a youth at the time, so he cannot be publicly named. In accordance with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, witnesses who were under 18 at the time are also not being named.

At 19 years old then, James McIntyre was one of the chaperones that night – to be able to rent out Kinookimaw campground, they needed chaperones involved who were of legal drinking age.

Bobbie-Joe Wegner and two witnesses who were youth at the time, V.C. and Y.K., were all out at the party that night, arriving with the group the accused was with.

V.C. told court there were people in the group who had weapons – she said Kyle Edwards and Dustin Scudder both had knives with them, “they always carried them.” Scudder told court on Tuesday that he had a knife with him as they went to the campground.

McIntyre said he knew one person in a group that came in when he was working at the gate, Edwards.

V.C., Wegner and Y.K. all mention Edwards as being in their group that night, along with the accused.

A little while later, McIntyre said he left the gate and went down to the bonfire. He was talking with someone when he said he heard a bottle breaking, then saw Misha walk past holding his side and watched another guy come up and hit Misha with a bottle. Then he said two men started kicking Misha. He said Misha was on the ground, his arms up to protect himself, and he wasn’t fighting back.

In their separate testimony, both V.C. and Wegner said that, at some point after they arrived, there was an argument between Misha and Andrew Perkins, who was also in the uninvited group. Perkins was dating B.V., who was Misha’s ex, and was also at the party.

V.C. and Wegner said they saw Misha “bottle” Perkins, hitting him with a glass bottle.

Wegner said that’s when everyone started running around – she remembered other fights happening on the other side of the fire, including the fight between Scott Nelson and Derek Enns, for which Nelson ended up pleading guilty to aggravated assault.

V.C. couldn’t remember what, if any, response Perkins had to the bottle, but said that after Perkins was hit, she saw him move off to the side, looking like he was going to cry. She said she saw the accused talking to Perkins, and then saw the two of them go after Misha.

McIntyre also said there was another fight that happened on the other side of the bonfire – Derek Enns rolling around on the ground with someone McIntyre didn’t know.

That’s when McIntyre said he went into the bush with another group of people to get away from the fight. Wegner said she ran with the tide of other people running away, and ended up back at her car. V.C. said she moved, trying to get away from the fight and couldn’t see anymore.

After the fighting stopped and people cleared away, V.C. said she remembered seeing Misha walking away without a shirt on, that he had blood on his stomach, but she didn’t know where it came from. Suddenly, he was lying on the ground and there were people around him – she couldn’t say how long it was between when she saw Misha walking away and when she saw him on the ground.

McIntyre told court his group came back out of the bush a couple of minutes later because they heard someone screaming.

When they got back into the clearing, he said Misha was on the ground with a group of people around him, maybe 70 or 80 feet away from the spot where Misha had been kicked.

He said a blonde girl he didn’t know was yelling angrily at Misha while he lay on the ground, and McIntyre told her to leave.

McIntyre didn’t know the accused in the case, and didn’t give any evidence about him by name, during his testimony.

V.C. said she and her boyfriend stayed with the group around Misha, running back and forth from the gate to lead EMS inside. She said they were there for quite a while, waiting to be cleared by the police to leave.

Wegner said she and her group waited 15 or 20 minutes at her car for everyone in the group before heading to Regina Beach for a short time, and then back to Regina.

Given the length of time between that night and their testimony, both V.C. and Wegner frequently responded that they couldn’t remember specifics when asked, or gave their best guess for things like where they were in the campground or who was in which vehicle and when.

Y.K. gave some testimony on Wednesday afternoon about what she saw, but there were issues with the availability of documents for her cross-examination from the defence lawyer, so her testimony was extended into Thursday morning.