Three men stand trial for ‘meth house’ murder

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This article was published 04/02/2019 (2580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three men are on trial for first-degree murder after the beaten, bloody and bound body of a man was found under a futon mattress in a West End “meth house” in January 2017.

The victim was Trenten Jeffrey Balonyk, 38, whose family members attended the start of the trial Monday in Winnipeg.

“He is not here to tell us what happened,” Crown attorney Monique Cam said in her opening address to the jury. “Instead, his story will be told through the evidence of various witnesses.”

On Jan. 17, 2017, Balonyk went to 645 Sherbrook St., which police witnesses who testified Monday said was reported to be a “meth house,” selling the cheap, addictive synthetic neurotoxin methamphetamine that’s been called the scourge of Winnipeg.

The drug house was run by then-24-year-old Brendan Bo Severight, Cam told the jury.

Severight is charged with first-degree murder, along with Luke Blair Moar, who was 31 at the time of his arrest and allegedly worked as the meth house’s “doorman.” Also charged with murder is Ryan Ralph Flett, who was 25 when he lived at the meth house with his girlfriend.

After entering the house, Balonyk’s hands, mouth and feet were bound with duct tape, Cam said.

“He was beaten about the head until he lay motionless and unresponsive,” the Crown told the jury. “Days later, his body was found under a mattress.”

The first witnesses at the trial that’s expected to last until March were Winnipeg police officers from the tactical support team and the forensic identification unit. A bloody baseball bat and a fingerprint found on the duct tape used to bind Balonyk’s hands are among the forensic and DNA evidence the Crown will present, Cam said.

Members of the tactical support team testified Monday they were called in after a report of an injured person or a body under a mattress on the second floor of the two-storey rental home. The report said there were up to six people inside, as well as two shotguns.

Sgt. Dean Lambert said the team responded because it was potentially a high-risk situation. Members went to the back and front of the house, where they used a battering ram to bust open the door.

Const. Terrance Machalek said a couch had been barricaded against one door, and he moved it out of the way and went upstairs as team members called out to people inside to put their hands up and get down on the floor. Three people were in the house, which was a trash-covered mess, but none of the suspects, court heard.

Machalek said he went room-to-room looking for the reported victim.

“There was garbage on the floor and food containers everywhere,” he testified. In one of the rooms, he spotted a futon mattress with junk piled on top of it.

He said he lifted the mattress and saw a man lying on the floor with a yellow internet cable tied around his chest and arms, with his hands and ankles bound tightly with duct tape. The body had a something wrapped around his head, Machalek said.

“He was stiff. His body was motionless” and “it gave off smell,” Machalek said police officers come to know. “That smell sticks with you — that the body had been there for a few days.”

The trial continues.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca