Jurors hear witness accounts of Tran’s final moments alive

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Kaila Tran spent her final moments alive surrounded by strangers frantically trying to save her.

Tran, 27, was ambushed in the parking lot of her St. Vital apartment block and stabbed to death in June 2012. Several residents of the same complex witnessed the aftermath and rushed to her side. Four of them took the stand Wednesday at the trial of Treyvonne Willis, 22, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

“I kept telling her to hang on, telling her to listen to my voice; the sirens were coming, help was coming,” an emotional Tracy Hayden told jurors. She works in the medical field and struggled to find a pulse while speaking with 911.

“I couldn’t. There was too much blood around the neck,” said Hayden. She had rushed outside to the parking lot of the Clayton Drive complex after hearing a woman’s screams while watching TV just after 7 a.m.

“It was anguished. Piercing. Horrifying,” she said. Hayden then saw a “black, shaped figure” hunched over the young woman, who was clearly in distress. He fled as she and others yelled for him to stop.

“I said ‘What the (expletive) are you doing, man? Leave her alone,” James Mott testified Wednesday.

He also heard Tran’s screams from inside his apartment and briefly gave chase as the dark-skinned young man took off, briefly glancing in his direction.

“That look, when he looked back at me. I remember to that day,” said Mott.

He tried to chase down the attacker, first on foot and then on his bicycle, but lost him when the man ran towards the Seine River where police would later recover the murder weapon.

Cheylynn Moizer was awakened by the screams. She jumped out of bed, put her glasses on and rushed to the kitchen window to look down into the parking lot below. “I saw a man on top of a woman. He was in the motion of hitting her,” said Moizer. She yelled “What are you doing?” out her window and told her boyfriend to call 911. Then she rushed outside to a horrific scene she will never forget.

“She was unrecognizable. She was brutally bloodied. It wasn’t what I expected,” Moizer said. Moizer and several others surrounded Tran, who was struggling to stay alive.

“When she was breathing, you could hear blood in her throat. We were losing her,” said Moizer. The group began CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

“It took a really long time, like 15 minutes,” she said.

A fourth neighbour, Keri-Lee Smith, broke down in tears Wednesday while describing the scene. She also screamed at the attacker to stop, who responded “Don’t worry about it” before running away.

The Crown alleges Willis — an acquaintance of Tran’s boyfriend — killed Tran after finding himself immersed in the drug trade and deep in debt. At some point in 2012, an offer came along he allegedly couldn’t refuse.

Prosecutors say he made a “devastating and lethal decision” in an attempt to repay the debt.

Willis allegedly laid in wait outside the apartment, then pounced when Tran left the building. Tran was stabbed repeatedly in the head and upper body. Willis was arrested six days later and charged with the most serious offence in the Criminal Code.

While all four witnesses who testified Wednesday said they got a glimpse of the attacker and provided partial descriptions, none of them specifically identified Willis.

A key Crown witness is expected to testify today. The man, who is one of Willis’s friends, was allegedly with him at the time of both the planning and execution. The man is expected to tell jurors about what he knew and “how that drug debt owed was connected to the decision made,” according to the Crown.

Jurors will also review text messages between the two men that were seized by police. The Crown said it provided a “candid look into conversations” both before and after the murder Willis would not have expected to be monitored.

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