Ex-girlfriend testifies slain teen wasn’t violent

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/10/2017 (2959 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 17-year-old Winnipeg teen who was fatally stabbed at Kelvin High School more than two years ago was “really upset” over a breakup, his former girlfriend testified Friday.

Brett Bourne died after he was stabbed over the lunch hour on June 2, 2015, following his alleged attempt to start a fight with a boy he believed had stolen his girlfriend from him.

The ex-girlfriend, now 19, testified in court on Friday during the second-degree murder trial of a teen boy, who was also 17 at the time. He’s accused of stepping into the fight and getting a knife to stab Bourne as he chased the other teen around school property.

Court-ordered publication bans mean the accused and the witnesses who testified on Friday can’t be identified because they were underage at the time of the stabbing.

Bourne and the young woman dated on and off for two years before breaking up about four or five months prior to the stabbing, she testified. She began dating another 17-year-old who had been in Bourne’s group of friends, and Bourne took the end of their relationship “really rough,” she said.

“It really upset Brett that we were dating, even though he knew that me and him weren’t together anymore and stuff like that. It really, really upset him,” the young woman said. “We were still friends and we cared about each other.”

She had broken up with the other boy about a week before Bourne allegedly saw him while Bourne was cycling past the school and tried to start a fight, court heard.

Bourne had been expelled from Kelvin and wasn’t allowed on school property. Other witnesses reported seeing Bourne yell at the other boy from across the street, trying to get him to fight. It’s the Crown’s theory the accused heard Bourne yelling, got a knife out of his friend’s car and stabbed Bourne in the torso.

Bourne was unarmed, according to Crown attorneys Krista Berkis and Erika Dolcetti.

A jury is tasked with hearing the evidence and deciding on the facts of the case. The accused’s defence lawyer, Greg Brodsky, has suggested Bourne was known to carry weapons.

Bourne’s ex-girlfriend testified she knew he carried mace spray and a baton for his own protection, but she said she never saw him use them. She had never known him to carry a knife, she said. About a month before the stabbing, Bourne had confronted her then-boyfriend when he saw them walking together. He pushed the other boy and said something like, “How could you take my girl?” she testified.

However, she said she didn’t know Bourne as a violent or confrontational person and never saw him fight.

“He would kind of avoid, if anything,” she said.

She testified the accused wasn’t close friends with the boy Bourne allegedly wanted to fight.

The jury also heard Friday from a former Kelvin student, now 18, who caught parts of the incident on camera. He testified he had his camcorder with him that day — “I bring it everywhere” —when he saw Bourne across the street and heard him calling the other boy names.

He testified he saw Bourne pull up his shirt to cover his face and run onto school property, chasing the other 17 year old. It seemed as though Bourne was “trying to act tough,” he testified, saying he started recording as soon as he saw people running.

He testified he never saw anyone pull out a weapon. He later turned over his memory card to police.

Winnipeg Police Service officers previously testified they used the video to help them establish a timeline of what happened that day. Police believe the accused cut himself on the arm and later reported he’d been injured during the fight with Bourne.

The trial is set to run for another 21/2 weeks.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay