'It just went off. I just wanted to scare them,' son recalls Gerald Stanley saying after gun fired
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Not long after his father told him the semi-automatic pistol he was holding accidentally went off and killed Colten Boushie, Sheldon Stanley — the son of Boushie’s accused killer Gerald Stanley — said he and his parents sat in silence drinking coffee around their dining room table.
It was brief period of quiet before police arrived at the farm near Biggar, Sask., and an investigation began into the fatal shooting of Boushie, 22, who had driven onto the Stanley cattle farm on Aug. 9, 2016, with four other people — two men and two women.
The Stanley farm, where Colten Boushie was shot, was photographed by the CBC in August 2016. (CBC)
“I don’t know what happened. It just went off. I just wanted to scare them,” Sheldon remembers his father saying after three shots were fired from the pistol.
The younger Stanley testified at his father’s trial today in Court of Queen’s Bench in Battleford, Sask. Gerald Stanley, 56, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in Boushie’s death.
Debbie Baptiste, Colten Boushie’s mother, held up this sign outside the courthouse after Sheldon Stanley’s testimony. (Olivia Stefanovich/CBC)
Sheldon, 28, said he and his father were working on a fence on the afternoon of Aug. 9, 2016, when they noticed an SUV loudly coming down the driveway toward their home and shop.
When a man in dark clothing started an ATV near the shop, Sheldon told the jury that he began running towards the man.
He said the man got back into the SUV, which then backed into a vehicle belonging to Sheldon’s mother.
3 gunshots
Sheldon said he was heading into the farmhouse to get his truck keys, when he heard the first gunshot, followed by two more.
He testified that he saw his father standing by the driver’s side door of the grey Ford Escape and a man in the driver’s seat was slumped over the steering wheel.
Gerald Stanley, charged in the death of Colten Boushie, arrives at the courthouse in with one of his lawyers Wednesday morning. (Guy Quenneville/CBC)
He said his father, looking sick, walked toward him with the pistol in one hand and a magazine in the other.
“It went off,” Sheldon recalls his father saying.
RCMP probed nearby theft complaint
Earlier on Wednesday, RCMP Const. Andrew Park testified that he investigated a complaint about people in a grey SUV trying to break into a truck about 20 kilometres from the Stanley farm on the same day Boushie was shot.
- Follow Day 2 of the trial testimonies via reporters Charles Hamilton‘s and Jason Warick‘s tweets here or at the bottom of this story. On mobile? Click here.
Stanley’s fate lies with 12 jurors. On Wednesday, his son, Sheldon Stanley, is scheduled to talk about what happened on the day of Boushie’s 2016 death. (Cloudesley Rook-Hobbs )
RCMP under fire
On Tuesday, defence lawyer Scott Spencer castigated the first two witnesses in the Crown’s case — both RCMP officers involved in the investigation — for their handling and analysis of evidence.
The first witness, Cpl. Terry Heroux, said he did not order a comprehensive blood splatter analysis of the blood found in the SUV.
Heroux also said he did not know where the SUV ended up after it was towed away from the RCMP’s exam bay. Spencer said that stripped him of his ability to order an independent analysis of the car.
While two bullet casings matching a gun registered to Stanley were found on the yard, the bullet that killed Boushie was not recovered from the scene, Heroux said.
Followup witness Sgt. Jennifer Barnes, a blood splatter expert, said she did not visit the scene and only examined photos of the blood splatter inside the car several months after the shooting.
The trial at the Queen’s Bench courthouse is expected to last three weeks. (Guy Quenneville/CBC)
She said blood spatter on a loaded rifle barrel — found by the RCMP outside the car beside Boushie’s body — suggests the rifle may have been inside the car, by the driver’s side foot area, at the time the gun that killed Boushie went off.
The trial is expected to last until Feb. 15.
“Murder is murder,” Colten Boushie’s mom Debbie Baptiste says. #boushie #stanleytrial pic.twitter.com/bTNQwxpQC8
Article source: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/dreamers-furious-democrats-gave-shutdown-180123141341098.html
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