911 call at odds with evidence: Crown

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This article was published 16/10/2017 (2970 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jurors in a second-degree murder trial Monday heard the 911 call made by the accused after a bullet fired from a high-powered handgun killed Michelle Stobbe on Canada Day in 2014.

“This girl — this girl she f—— took my gun,” John Elwood Cameron said in the recording played by the Crown on the first day of his trial Monday. “She held it to her head…She’s dead. Please send someone… She f—— shot herself in the f—— head,” he said in the recording that was at times garbled.

It was Cameron, not the victim, who shot the 28-year-old woman after “a little get-together” at his apartment on the 21st floor of Chateau 100, a downtown highrise, Crown counsel Sheila Doe said in her opening address to the jury.

Doe told the 12 jurors that Cameron and his brother and three friends including a couple were at his place where there were alcohol, drugs and guns, including Cameron’s nine-millimetre Beretta pistol. At one point, Stobbe joined the gathering. Later, all of the guests except Stobbe left Cameron’s apartment, she said.

“In the early hours of Canada Day, she was shot to death in back of the neck with John Cameron’s Beretta,” Doe said. The bullet exited her forehead, entered the wall and came to rest in the wall of the next apartment over, the Crown attorney said.

“Rather than call 911, at 1:45 am John sent his brother James a text message: ‘holy f— — she shot herself, bro,’” Doe told the court.

It took Cameron almost 74 minutes to contact 911, the Crown continued.

“He said she committed suicide with his gun and it happened 10 minutes ago.

“When police respond to the scene, two people open the door — John and his brother James. The only other person is Michelle Stobbe lying dead in the corner of the living room,” Doe said.

“What happened in that apartment that left Michelle Stobbe dead? We will argue that when the gun was fired it was John Cameron’s finger that was on the trigger.”

Doe told the jury they’ll hear testimony from witnesses who’d gathered at Cameron’s home, about the presence of drugs and alcohol as well as guns.

She said his brother, James Cameron, is set to testify about what happened before and after Stobbe was fatally shot, what he did when he received the text message from his brother, the accused, and what his brother John said to him.

The Crown is calling on testimony from witnesses who specialize in DNA, firearms and bloodstain pattern analysis, said Doe.

“At some point after blood got on that gun, that gun was wiped,” she told the court. The pathologist who examined her body will testify that Stobbe wasn’t shot with the gun right at her head but was from “some distance” between the barrel and her skin, she told the court.

“What was going on at that house party?” Doe asked.

“How was there a loaded nine-millimetre gun? Who wiped that firearm after it was shot and why?” Once the jury hears all the evidence, they’ll conclude it was John Cameron’s hand on the gun that shot Stobbe, she said.

Cameron is considered innocent until proven guilty, Justice James Edmond told the jurors at the beginning of the trial.

Before breaking for lunch Monday, court heard from the first police officer to arrive at the scene just after 3 a.m.

Winnipeg police Const. Michael Thiessen testified Monday that two men answered the door to the apartment — a sobbing John Cameron, who wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his brother James Cameron.

“Both appeared visibly upset,” said Thiessen, who patted both men down to make sure they were unarmed and had them sit in the hallway of the apartment until other officers arrived. The only thing John Cameron said to the first officer at the scene was, “She wasn’t my girlfriend,” Thiessen testified.

Cameron, who was 35 and a telecommunications-industry engineer at the time of 28-year-old’s Stobbe’s death, was the legal owner of the registered pistol, police said when he was first arrested. Police said at that time that Stobbe and Cameron were in a “casual, long-term relationship.”

Cameron is free on bail and watched Monday’s proceedings flanked by two supporters and other members of the public. Members of Stobbe’s family were in court Monday sitting on the opposite side of the room.

Cameron’s trial is expected to run until Friday, Nov. 3. The penalty for second-degree murder is life in prison without a chance of parole for 10 years.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca