‘I did not kill my mother’

A Winnipeg teen who left his Southdale home on the same morning he later found his mother bludgeoned to death in her bed, didn’t leave because he had errands to run — but to give himself an alibi, a prosecutor alleged Tuesday.

“I’m going to suggest you wanted and needed to be out of the house that morning… you needed to be out so that there would be a window in which someone else could have entered the home,” prosecutor Adam Bergen put to the now 23-year-old man.

“No sir, I did not need to be seen anywhere,” the man said.

The man is on trial charged with second-degree murder in the March 26, 2019, killing of his 51-year-old mother.

The Free Press is not naming the victim as it would identify the accused, who was 16 at the time of the killing.

On Monday, the man testified he got out of bed at around 8 a.m. and changed an air filter in his mother’s car, before leaving shortly after 9 a.m.

He told court he ran errands — he was on spring break from high school — which included taking their dog to a doggy daycare, buying a pair of jeans from a store at St. Vital mall, purchasing soap at a Walmart and returning an extra air filter to a Canadian Tire outlet.

While out, he texted friends to see if they wanted to “hang out.”

The man testified he returned home shortly before 11 a.m. and noticed an unusual smell in the house that he later recognized as bleach, but he went about refilling hand soap dispensers in the kitchen and washroom.

That’s when, the accused claims, he saw blood on his mother’s bedroom door and went inside.

Bergen alleged the man would have stayed away longer but was forced to come home when none of his friends were able to meet with him.

“If (your friends) had taken you up on your offer to hang out, you probably would have been out of the house for a much longer period of time,” Bergen said. “But they didn’t… and (one of your friends) actually hit the nail on the head when he said: ‘What are you even doing up?’”

The man said he was regularly out of the house by 9 a.m. and asked his friends to do something “all the time.”

“I’m going to suggest to you that if you had continued to stay out of the house and gone and done a number of things by yourself, that would have seemed a bit unusual,” Bergen said.

Bergen alleged if the accused had left his dog in the house, he would have had to keep her closed in a room to prevent her from going in his mother’s room.

“I did not kill my mother,” the man said. “So, when I left the house, I did not need to leave the house, I did not need (the dog) to leave the house. It’s not true… I had no need to keep (the dog) from going into my mom’s room.”

Defence lawyers allege the victim was killed by a male co-worker whom she had previously accused of harassing her.

Court has heard the woman had spent three months on sick leave after injuring her back and neck and was worried about her safety after seeing footprints in the snow leading to her backyard and signs someone had been rummaging in her car.

The accused told court he left the house on the morning of the murder without locking the front door.

“Did you take any of her concerns about security seriously or did you think she was being dramatic?” Bergen asked the man.

“I took them very seriously,” the man said.

“Why would you leave her in the house without locking the door?” Bergen said. “You took (the dog) away, (the victim) was still asleep in her bed, you knew she was scared.”

“Yes, sir,” the accused said softly, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

“And you didn’t check to make sure the door was locked behind you when you left,” Bergen continued, “taking with you the only vehicle.”

Bergen said text messages provided to court showed the accused asking his mother for permission on earlier occasions when taking the car out on his own, something he did not do on the morning of the slaying. The accused also didn’t tell his mother he was going to take the dog to daycare or return the air filter that morning, Bergen alleged.

“So, no one knew you were going to be out of the house that morning when you decided to go,” he said.

“No,” the man replied.

The trial continues.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca