Teen testifies she grabbed gun pointed at her, took bullet to leg

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This article was published 26/11/2021 (1084 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CONFRONTED by a stranger who pointed a rifle at her chest on a dark, inner-city street, Dana took quick action.

“He pointed it at someone else and me,” Dana, not her real name, testified Friday. “He couldn’t really choose. He just pointed it back and forth and I just grabbed it. I pointed it down toward my leg. It went off on the second tug of the barrel.”

Dana, who was 17 at the time of the July 1, 2019, incident and living much of her life on the street, said the teen didn’t say a word as he pulled the rifle from a bag and pointed it at her.

“There were no words,” she said. “He literally didn’t say anything.”

Dana fell to the ground after a bullet shot through her right thigh. The suspect ran away.

Dana said when an ambulance arrived, she refused medical treatment and caught a cab to her cousin’s home.

Dana was the first of several people who were injured in a spate of shootings that spanned nearly 24 hours, including one that killed 27-year-old Danielle Cote on Flora Avenue.

A 15-year-old boy is on trial charged with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count each of discharging a firearm with intent and possession of a firearm while prohibited. Last month, a 16-year-old co-accused pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, discharging a firearm with intent and robbery with a firearm.

The Crown and defence provided an agreed statement of facts to the court at the older youth’s hearing. It said Cote was targeted because she had witnessed her cousin being shot just seconds earlier.

Cote died immediately after suffering a rifle blast to the back of her head in the 400 block of Flora Avenue, shortly after 3 a.m.

At the October hearing, court was told the two boys shot Cote’s 18-year-old male cousin after he resisted their attempts to rob him. The younger accused shot the man and then shot Cote at the urging of the older boy, because she was a witness, court was told.

A police officer who testified at the younger boy’s trial Friday, told court she was reviewing security video at an Isabel Street business the following day, looking for evidence in the Cote shooting, when she came upon video that showed Dana being shot.

“Nobody knew that one existed,” Winnipeg Police Service Const. Shannon Mann testified.

Police were able to identify Dana after another security video showed her arriving at Ndinawe Youth Resource Centre on Selkirk Avenue an hour or so after she was shot.

Martin said she and another officer saw Dana at a Selkirk Avenue doughnut shop on July 3 and took her to Children’s Hospital for treatment.

While at the hospital, police learned Dana was a missing person and was supposed to be living with her grandmother.

Dana resisted police efforts to keep her in hospital and was charged with assaulting a police officer before she was released to the custody of Child and Family Services, Martin said.

The trial continues Monday.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca