Crown wraps up case in Fraser murder trial

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This article was published 27/01/2019 (2162 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Crown prosecutors have closed their case in the trial of a Winnipeg man accused in the stabbing death of a city bus driver.

The jury will to decide whether Brian Kyle Thomas, 24, is guilty of second-degree murder in the February 2017 slaying of Winnipeg Transit driver Irvine Jubal Fraser, 58, has now heard all of the evidence they can consider in their deliberations.

During the high-profile trial, jurors heard Thomas was the man police arrested on the frozen-over Red River in the aftermath of the stabbing. Details of the arrest and the treacherous ground police had to cover were brought to light Monday, as one of the responding officers recounted falling through melting ice.

Winnipeg Police Service Const. Justin Casavant was with his police dog at the riverbank near the southern edge of the University of Manitoba campus just after 2 a.m., Feb. 14, 2017, when he spotted Thomas walking away from him across the river ice. They were alone on the ice.

Casavant shouted for the other man to stop, telling him he was with the police K9 unit.

“At that time, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about the dangers, and, obviously, I didn’t realize what potentially would happen going out on the ice. My focus wasn’t primarily on that at that time,” he testified.

Casavant said he saw the man go down, but he wasn’t sure whether he slipped or got down on his own in response to being pursued by police. Casavant called for backup and other officers arrived to arrest Thomas.

The weather had been unseasonably warm, and the top layer of the ice had melted and refroze into slush, causing the arresting officers to fall several times onto Thomas and each other as they tried to carry the suspect to shore while he wasn’t bearing weight on his own legs, Casavant said.

“It was an entire struggle for them,” he said. “I couldn’t count how many times they fell. They fell several times into a heap on the ice.”

It was later, when Casavant went back across the ice to try to retrace the exact spot where the arrest happened, the ice gave way beneath his feet. He fell into the river up to his armpits.

“Honestly, I panicked,” he said. He tried to climb out of the water, but the ice he’d gripped in front of him broke, too. The river current pushed his legs up behind up perpendicular to the ice, and Casavant said that’s how he got himself out, while another officer called for help.

“I was able to, almost like a seal, slide my way up onto the ice,” Casavant testified. “I consider myself very lucky that I didn’t get pulled in. I think the way I fell may have been a saving grace. If I would’ve fallen the other way, I don’t think I would have been as lucky.”

Three other WPS officers were called to testify Monday — Const. Daniel Carriere, who handcuffed Thomas on the ice, Const. Christopher St. Croix, who found a knife during a springtime search of the riverbank a few months after the fatal stabbing, and Sgt. Chris Patts, who supervised the major crimes unit investigation and talked to the accused about his injuries following his arrest.

Defence lawyer Evan Roitenberg posed questions about Thomas’s injuries, which the jury heard he blamed on “the cops.” Police were the cause of his injured cheek and sore left leg, he told Patts, and cuts on his chest and hands were the result of being dragged to shore by arresting officers.

Carriere testified he and other officers ended up dragging Thomas by his legs the last 10 feet to shore because they were soaking wet, freezing and exhausted. He said he believed the suspect was intoxicated, and was often crying and yelling.

“It was very chaotic,” he said.

Crown and defence lawyers are set to present their closing arguments to the jury Wednesday.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay