Fatal stab wounds ‘made sure you finished it’: Crown

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This article was published 18/11/2021 (1132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Keishawn Mitchell wasn’t defending himself when he fatally stabbed Justin Silicz during an early morning street fight, he was “putting his muscle where his mouth was,” a prosecutor alleged Friday.

“You started it, you escalated it, and you made sure you finished it,” Crown attorney Chantal Boutin put to Mitchell during a two-hour cross-examination.

Silicz, a 32-year-old Winnipeg lawyer, died June 2, 2019, after he was stabbed while walking to his car from an after-hours club with friends.

Mitchell, 22, is on trial for second-degree murder. Mitchell admits he stabbed Silicz, but argues he acted in self-defence and was too intoxicated to form the intent to kill.

On Thursday, Mitchell testified, amid the street fight with two men, he “panicked and wanted to defend myself.”

The accused said he pulled a folding knife from his pocket, and “poked” Silicz two times on the left side of his body.

On Friday, Mitchell estimated he used only 20 per cent of his strength to plunge the knife.

Court heard one of those “pokes” penetrated 13 centimetres through two ribs, close to Silicz’s heart, while a second, more forceful stab severed another rib, causing his lungs and stomach to fill with blood.

“This is what you called a ‘poke’?” Boutin said.

“Can we agree if that is 20 per cent of your force, you should probably never ‘poke’ people?” she said. “What would happen if you used 50 per cent? Cut them in half?”

Mitchell had no need to use deadly force, the Crown said, pointing out if he thought he was in danger, he could have enlisted the help of two friends with him at the time.

“The reason for that is you were in control, that you had the upper hand and didn’t need them to step in,” Boutin said. “You used that knife the way you did because you wanted to put Justin Silicz down… You intended to do some damage.”

Earlier in the week, jurors heard from Tony Hajzler, who told court he, Silicz and Andrea Bosnjak were walking back to their car on Winnipeg Avenue around 4 a.m., when they saw three males walking in the same direction a short distance ahead of them.

After one of the males shouted to ask Bosnjak for a cigarette, what started as playful, casual banter escalated into an exchange of insults and threats, Hajzler testified. Mitchell, Hajzler said, walked up to him and as Silicz tried to de-escalate the situation, punched Hajzler in the face.

Hajzler testified Silicz charged at Mitchell and the two men exchanged several punches before Silicz was stabbed and fell to the ground.

Testifying Thursday, Mitchell painted Hajzler and Silicz as the aggressors, claiming matters only escalated after Hajzler hurled a homophobic slur at his group.

Mitchell said he and Hajzler continued to “chirp” and swear at each other and, as he walked toward Hajzler, Silicz was at his side.

“I was starting to feel a little serious that a fight was going to happen,” Mitchell said, adding he punched Hajzler in the face, thinking: “If I don’t hit him, he is going to hit me.”

Hajzler returned the punch, at which point Silicz charged at Mitchell, “swinging his arms, throwing a lot of punches,” he said. As the two men exchanged punches, Hajzler moved to join the fight, Mitchell alleged.

“At that point, I was really scared I would be jumped by two guys.”

Mitchell testified he then pulled the knife.

“He went down and got right back up,” Mitchell said of Silicz after the confrontation, leaving him to think he wasn’t injured. “I didn’t see any blood and he seemed alright to me… I thought it was over and I walked away.”

That didn’t make sense, Boutin said Friday: if Mitchell was so terrified of the two men, why would he turn his back on them?

“(Silicz) has got to be real mad now that you have stabbed him, and his friend Tony is still mad at you,” Boutin said.

“The fight was over, they stopped coming at me,” Mitchell replied. “That’s how it happened.”

Mitchell said he had been drinking heavily prior to the attack and attributed his initial boldness in confronting Hajzler and Silicz to “liquid courage.”

However, Mitchell appeared to have a clear memory of events that night and security video recorded around the time of the attack showed him having no apparent trouble walking or running and, at one point, appearing to re-enact the stabbing with his friends, Boutin said.

If Mitchell was as drunk as he claimed, the Crown said, how was he able, as he testified, to pull a folding knife from his pocket while in the middle of a fight, open it with two hands and stab a man, all within a couple of seconds?

“You would agree, if you were able to do that, you weren’t that intoxicated,” Boutin said.

The defence closed its case Friday, Mitchell its only witness.

Jurors will hear closing arguments next week.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca