The young Vanier sex-trade worker thought she was going to die in the backseat of Jacques Rouschop’s pickup truck.

Jacques (Porkchop) Rouschop was a regular client, but this time was different, the 26-year-old woman told court at the career thief’s rape trial on Monday. It was the summer of 2013 — she doesn’t recall the date — and she said she was dope sick so she called Rouschop, 44, with the hope of getting a trick so she could buy either crack or fentanyl. She started doing dope at 11 and shooting up at 13. She’s been clean for six months, she told court.

She was dozing off in Rouschop’s pickup, she testified, as they drove to an industrial lot in Ottawa’s west end. 

“I knew him so I didn’t think anything bad would happen,” she testified.

It was supposed to be just oral sex, but he wanted more, she testified, and when she refused, he put her in a choke-hold and pressed his weight down on her. (The accused weighs around 350 pounds.)

“I couldn’t breathe. I was trying to get free but I couldn’t. … I thought I was going to die.”

She said she felt like she was drowning as she was raped from behind, she testified.

She says she also remembers him laughing.

“I felt completely hopeless and scared,” she said.

She then said she lost consciousness.

The woman is the second to testify against Rouschop, on trial for vicious sex attacks against them.

She told the jury — six women, six men — that Rouschop lost control and grabbed her pants, but under cross-examination by defence lawyer Natasha Calvinho she later said she wasn’t wearing pants. Instead, she said she was wearing stockings and a dress, and originally told police in 2013 that she had a jacket on, too, but said on Monday that she wasn’t wearing one.

There were other things she couldn’t remember — notably the size of Rouschop’s penis (measuring two inches erect, court has heard). “You just see so many of them … you just close your eyes and do it,” she replied.

She also didn’t recall the accused’s umbilical hernia, around the size of a baseball.

Calvinho established that the complainant’s memory was bad when it came to ever-changing details.

But the witness shot back: ” I don’t remember the little details, but I know it happened.”

The trial continues Tuesday in courtroom No. 32 at the Elgin Street courthouse with Superior Court Justice Robert Smith presiding. 

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It wasn’t just any nod.

This was a nod — up and down for Yes — from OC Transpo driver Bhupinderpal Gill, and he was agreeing with his mistress when she told a psychic that the secret lovers would do anything to be together. Gill, a man of few words, didn’t say anything, but he gave that nod.

At least that’s how psychic Susanne Shields recalled it in court Friday at murder trial of Gill and his mistress, fellow city bus driver Gurpreet Ronald. The pair are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 slaying of Gill’s wife, 43-year-old Jagtar Gill. She was slashed and bludgeoned to death in the family room of her Barrhaven home.

But it seemed as though the psychic was the one on trial in a packed Ottawa courtroom Friday.

Under a detailed cross-examination by defence lawyer James Harbic, the psychic defended herself against a blistering allegation.

“You made it up!” Harbic charged.

“That is absolutely not true,” the psychic shot back. “I have no benefit to lie.”

The defence lawyer accused her of fabricating evidence to exact revenge on Gill after a falling out. 

“There’s no getting back at anyone,” the psychic replied.

Harbic firmly established that it was the first time anyone had ever heard about the incriminating nod.

Shields didn’t mention it in her 2014 interview with police or at the preliminary hearing in 2015, court heard.

But the psychic had an answer, saying it was the first time she mentioned the nod because nobody had ever asked her about it.

The clairvoyant, who was hired by the accused killers in 2012, told court that they had awful nicknames for the victim, ranging from ‘The Devil” to “Nazi woman.”

The psychic testified she hears and sees “loved ones from the other side.” She testified she contacted police after the killing not because she recognized the Gill name in the news, but rather because a “voice” had told her about the murder.

The cross-examination of the psychic was designed to hammer away at the credibility of the Crown witness, who told court she had such trouble with dates and numbers that she doesn’t know her own age.

The clairvoyant has so far dropped her business street address eight times while on the stand.

She was hired as a clairvoyant by the lovers in 2012, and later staged their homes using feng shui. 

She testified Friday that she purchased crystals and wind chimes for the Gill home to help flow the energy. She charged them $2,400 for the job. 

Gill was upset the house didn’t fetch his asking price and blamed the clairvoyant. She told court that he called her awful names that left her “mortified.” She also said she did everything she could to get the house the best price.

The clairvoyant testified that the accused killers hated the victim and that both were unhappy in their marriages. (The Gill marriage was arranged).

Questioned about her powers, the clairvoyant told court that a psychiatrist concluded that she’s “as normal as normal can be in a world that’s not normal.”

The psychic testified that her powers as a medium for the dead have often been verified by raising intimate details about the lives of the living and the dead.

The trial had some delays Friday because Gurpreet Ronald said she was feeling ill. Her DNA was found at the crime scene, on knives and bloody gloves, court has heard. While Gill is expected to testify in his own defence it is still not known if Ronald will do the same.

The court has heard that Gill dumped one of the weapons days after the killing, and he was under police surveillance at the time.

Jagtar Gill was killed on her wedding anniversary.

The trial continues Monday.

If there is a normal way to act after your wife is found slashed and bludgeoned to death on the living room floor, this wasn’t it.

It was Jan. 29, 2014, and just hours after Jagtar Gill was killed in her Barrhaven home. Scott Fewer, a family friend, paid a visit to Gill’s husband after hearing the news. The scene wasn’t what Fewer expected, he testified Friday at Bhupinderpal Gill’s first-degree murder trial.

“I was struck by the lack of concern. There was nobody saying ‘I wonder who did this?’ No one was crying,” Fewer told court about the conversation with Jagtar Gill’s husband and relatives hours after the killing.

Gill and his mistress, Gurpreet Ronald, are on trial for killing his 43-year-old wife. The accused killers — both OC Transpo drivers who booked the same shifts — sat in silence as they listened to Fewer recount what he branded as odd behaviour hours after the slaying.

He recalled asking Gill how he found his wife. Gill answered in a low-tone and said she had been slashed, the witness testified. 

Then he recalled that Gill, a man of few words, motioned with his hand across his neck. (His wife’s throat had been slit.)

“And nobody’s asking ‘Who did this?'” Fewer recalled. There was no one running home and locking their doors, he said.

The neighbour, who became a family friend, was one of the last to see Jagtar Gill alive on the morning of her death, when he dropped by for coffee with her husband. Bhupinderpal Gill insisted he stay for breakfast, and started chopping up ingredients for an omelette.

Jagtar Gill was in the living room watching a Bollywood movie. She was laid up and recovering from surgery. 

Jagtar Gill was killed on her anniversary.

“She was doing good and recovering,” Fewer said. 

He had met Bhupinderpal Gill about seven years ago when he helped him clear snow from his driveway so he could make his OC Transpo shift. 

He said when he’d visit Gill at home, his mistress was usually around. 

“To me it always appeared like they were a couple. They were playful, joking,” Fewer recalled.

They were spending a lot of time together, and it made Fewer uncomfortable so he tried to “minimize my contact with him.”

Fewer, who teaches at Algonquin College, didn’t want to be seen as “promoting” or “allowing” the affair, he said.

He spent enough time with Gill and Ronald that they both shared details about their marriages, with Ronald saying hers had hit rock bottom.

“She said their marriage was over and wanted to move on,” Fewer said.

Gurpreet Ronald

He recalled the day he went on a trip with Gill and Ronald to buy a motorcycle. Gill bought his mistress a pink helmet and she posed for the camera on the bike. She later posted them online, and Gill, upset, demanded she take them down.

“He was not to happy about her posting those,” Fewer said.

Gill was also upset that his mistress was making plans to buy the house directly behind his family home.

“He said: I’m trying to convince her not to,” Fewer recalled.

Gill and Ronald have both pleaded not guilty. They are accused of killing Gill’s wife so they could finally be together.

Jagtar Gill was killed on the anniversary of her arranged marriage.

The jury has heard about key DNA evidence against the mistress, Gurpreet Ronald. Her DNA was all over the murder weapons and the bloody gloves. Police say when Gill came home with his daughter on the day of the killing, he went to the kitchen and started washing the bloody knives.

The jury has heard that Gill also dumped one of the weapons outside, and that Ronald dumped the bloody gloves in a park, according to police.

Gill is expected to testify in his own defence at the trial before Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett. The trial continues Monday.

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Det. Chris Benson was finding it hard to believe Bhupinderpal Gill’s story because it kept changing every time he told it.

It was the accused wife killer’s third police interview, but this one was the show as the detective spent hours peeling away the layers of lies.

“You sit and lie to my face,” Benson pressed.

Bhupinderpal Gill lied about his affair, lied about when he dumped a murder weapon and lied about washing the bloody knives used to kill his wife, Jagtar Gill.

“And your story changes every time I give you a little piece of more information,” Benson said.

OC Transpo drivers and secret lovers Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, and Gurpreet Ronald, 37, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 killing. Jagtar Gill, 43, was slashed and bludgeoned to death as she lay in a weakened state recovering from surgery a day earlier. It was the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. Gill and Ronald have both pleaded not guilty.

The video of the April 13, 2014 police interrogation of Bhupinderpal Gill was shown at the trial on Wednesday.

In the hours-long interview, Gill maintained he had nothing to do with the killing of his wife. She after all, was the mother of his children, he noted.

The police theory is that Gill’s mistress killed his wife while he was out running errands with his daughter at a prescribed time so he would have an alibi. They figured the only way to be together was to kill his wife, police say.

The court has heard that Gill didn’t want to divorce his wife for fear he’d lose his children.

Either way, the detective noted he couldn’t afford a divorce.

“Jagtar wasn’t working anymore. You knew if you got a divorce you have to work even harder ’cause you would have to pay for her. You’d have to pay for another house for Jagtar. Have to pay for a house for you. Have to pay for your kids, right? You couldn’t afford to get divorced,” Benson charged.

Gill denied ever wanting a divorce.

Benson said it would have been so much easier to just walk out the door.

“Why did you do all this? All of this is a hell of a lot worse than just grabbing a suitcase and walking out of the house,” Benson declared.

The line of questioning rattled out this sensational answer.

“If what you have got enough to take me to the court, put me in the jail so that’s what I deserve,” Gill said in a thick East Indian accent.

The detective played to the target’s integrity as a family man.

“I think you need to be honest as a man, as a father. Right. Man to man, father to father, I think you need to be honest for your children,” Benson said. “I wouldn’t want my kids to find out that I’m not truthful and this is your opportunity. It’s the one thing a man has is his integrity. You can take everything else away but in the eyes of his kids he has this integrity. Everything else is just material.” 

“Well, that’s fine sir. I think I’m deep enough to making these mistakes so deserve to go to jail. So that’s fine,” Gill said.

The detective then pressed him again and again to come clean about his role in his wife’s murder.

The accused killer, tired from hours of questioning, stood his ground on that main point and repeated that he had no involvement in the deadly plot.

The trial continues Thursday.

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Bhupinderpal Gill hid the bloody murder weapon not because he killed his wife, but rather out of fear he’d be blamed for it, court heard on Friday.

It was just before 1 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2014, when Gill and his daughter returned home and made the horrifying discovery that his wife, Jagtar Gill, had been slashed and bludgeoned to death in their Barrhaven home. His daughter was screaming. Her father picked up one of the weapons — a bloodstained weightlifting bar — to arm himself as he went upstairs and down looking for an intruder, his lawyer said. 

“His terror was magnified because he thought the killer, the intruder, might still be in the house,” defence lawyer James Harbic told the jury at Gill’s first-degree murder trial on Friday. 

OC Transpo drivers and secret lovers Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, and Gurpreet Ronald, 37, are on trial for the killing. Police found incriminating DNA evidence against Ronald but the Crown’s case against Gill is absent of any physical evidence linking him to the killing.

On Friday, after six weeks of trial, his lawyer finally revealed Gill’s side of the story: Once he checked the house for an intruder, it dawned on him that he was holding the bloody weapon used in the killing of his wife, at the scene of the killing. 

It was at this point in time, Harbic told the jury, that Gill was overcome with an intense fear that “they’d put this on me.”

His mind raced back to 2004 when his in-laws had accused him of threatening to kill his wife, the lawyer said, adding that it haunted Gill, and here he was, 10 years later, now holding a weapon used in the killing of his wife.

He hid the weightlifting bar in the basement in a box and then started washing the bloody knives, Harbic said, adding that Gill had used them that morning to make an omelette and feared his fingerprints were still on them.

“It was the worst mistake of his life,” his lawyer told the jury.

The lawyer also told the jury that Gill never threatened to kill his wife and was falsely accused, as he was on Friday as he sat in the prisoner’s box next to his mistress on trial for his wife’s killing.

The lawyer tried to dismantle the police theory that the secret lovers plotted to kill Jagtar Gill so they could be together. The theory has Ronald killing Jagtar while Bhupinderpal and his daughter ran errands at a prescribed time.

The reality is that Gill’s affair with Ronald ended four months before the killing, Harbic told the jury. The lawyer also suggested that, in fact, Ronald was having another affair with another OC Transpo driver in the weeks leading to the killing.

Gill took the stand on Friday afternoon and testified that just two days after his arranged marriage to Jagtar, his in-laws branded him as a no-account street rat.

“I was not worthy of Jagtar,” Gill said through an interpreter. 

It was Jagtar Gill who sponsored Bhupinderpal so he could leave India for a better life in Ottawa.

He came to Ottawa with next to nothing in 1997. He delivered newspapers in the morning and pizza at night. He worked on an electronics assembly line, drove a cab and later an OC Transpo bus. By 2014, Gill’s assets were worth $1.5 million. 

“Our married life was good but she had chronic medical problems,” he recalled.

They stopped sleeping together in 2008 but he told the jury: “I loved her as the mother of my three children and I love her as a wife.”

Gill has always maintained that he had nothing to do with his wife’s killing. His testimony continues on Monday morning at the Elgin Street courthouse in Room No. 34. 

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Days after finding his wife dead on the living room floor,Bhupinderpal Gill confronted his mistress, asking if she was the one who slit his wife’s throat on their 17th wedding anniversary. 

Testifying at his murder trial on Monday, Gill, an OC Transpo driver, said rumours were swirling after the Jan. 29, 2014 killing. One of the rumours, he told court, was that Gurpreet Ronald, his secret lover, had killed his wife so they could finally be together.

When Gill confronted Ronald, she denied any involvement and said she had an alibi, he testified.

Gill and fellow bus driver Ronald are on trial for the killing, accused of plotting to kill and later executing it with Ronald slashing and bludgeoning her to death while Gill was out running errands with his daughter.

Gill recounted another rumour that had him as the killer.

“Were you involved in the killing?” his defence lawyer James Harbic asked him.

“No,” Gill replied.

“Did you hire a hit man to kill your wife?” Harbic asked.

“No,” Gill said.

He also gave the jury a play-by-play about the day he found his wife dead. 

Even Gill himself says he looks guilty. After all, he hid a bloody weapon used in the killing twice.

Monday was Gill’s second day on the stand, and he gave the most detailed account so far on why he hid key evidence in the killing of his wife.

His mind was frozen, he was in shock, he said. He picked up a blood-stained weightlifting bar from the living room floor, saying he needed to arm himself in case the killer was still in the house. He ran upstairs and down.

“I went running everywhere,” he recalled. “I checked all the bedrooms, there was nothing there.”

Then he said he realized he was holding the blood-stained weapon at the scene of the crime. He first hid it in the basement.

Days later, he said, his fears grew that nobody would ever believe him if he started telling the truth.

“If I tell anyone about this, the blame will come to me. So I threw it away,” he said, recalling his thoughts at the time.

The police did find the weapon he hid in the basement. In fact, they secretly replaced it with another weightlifting bar they soaked in goat’s blood. They set up video surveillance in the basement to see what, if anything, he’d do with it. The police trick worked, as a surveillance crew caught him removing the bar and dumping it in a wooded spot near Cedarview Drive, not far from his Barrhaven home.

He also told the jury: “I didn’t want to keep it in my house.”

Gill, 40, also tried to explain away all the lies he told police in a series of interviews after the killing.

He said he lied about his affair with Ronald, 37, because he was ashamed and didn’t want his children to find out about it. He said the affair lasted three years and ended four months before the killing. 

He also admitted that he tampered with the other weapons (two kitchen knives) used in the killing.

“Being nervous, I picked up the knives, threw them in the sink,” he testified.

He feared his fingerprints were still on them from chopping onions that morning, he told court.

The jury has heard incriminating DNA evidence against Ronald but the Crown’s case against Gill is absent of any physical evidence linking him to the killing. The incriminating evidence against him is from what he did after the killing, when he returned home.

These mistakes were the worst mistakes of his life, his lawyer told the jury.

Gill also told the jury that he would never have let his daughter make such a horrifying discovery if he knew what awaited them on their return home after running errands.

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The last accomplice on trial for the 2010 execution-style killing of Barrhaven teenager Michael Swan was found guilty Thursday as the so-called mastermind behind the botched marijuana and money robbery.

Sam Tsega, 24, had been on trial for second-degree murder, but Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken spared him a murder conviction and instead found him guilty of manslaughter.

Tsega was the Ottawa connection for his hardened gang-banger friends, known as the Toronto 3. He told them they could find money and marijuana at Swan’s home and helped them case the house before the killing.

Without Tsega, the police and later prosecutors theorized, the Feb. 22, 2010 murder would never have happened.

The judge said the Crown failed to prove an essential element of second-degree murder, namely that Tsega, who was not at the scene of the crime, knew the robbery plot would end in murder. 

“It was a tragic and senseless killing that has forever changed the fabric of the Barrhaven community,” the judge told court.

The judge said she wished society had the ability to turn back time on “the recklessness of youth” that has left the victim’s family “forever scarred.”

The manslaughter conviction follows six years of legal proceedings for Swan’s family and friends. His parents — admired by both the Crown and defence — have withstood a painfully long trip through the criminal justice system. They have sat quietly in court, across four convictions, listening to horrifying details about their 19-year-old son’s last moments in life. At best, they say, they felt like spectators, victimized by it all.

It was just after midnight when three masked men, dressed in black with handguns drawn, stormed Michael Swan‘s home and forced him and his friends to their knees at gunpoint.

The teenage marijuana seller had been watching hockey with his friends when the men from Toronto came to rob him. The three asked him where he kept his dope and his money, but Swan wouldn’t give it up. He even refused after they pressed a gun into his back.

“I don’t know,” Swan told them.

Those were his last words.

They shot him. The bullet pierced his heart. He was dead in less than a minute.

The next in line for questioning was his girlfriend.

On her knees, at gunpoint, and having just seen her boyfriend executed, she told them everything they wanted to know.

The men forced the survivors into a basement sauna and told them to stay put as the three fled with their stolen loot, including video games.

Swan‘s girlfriend could be heard screaming for help as police arrived. They tried in vain to revive Swan but there was nothing they could do to save him.

The men left for Toronto with almost two kilograms of weed and $3,000, and they would have got away if not for a cellphone that police were able to track. Police arrested them hours later on the 401.

Sam Tsega, though convicted in the killing Thursday, walked out the front door of the Elgin Street courthouse. He’s still on bail awaiting sentencing but prosecutors are expected to argue that he belongs in jail until then.

Michael Swan’s family is devastated. His parents don’t celebrate Christmas anymore even though it used to be his mother’s favourite time of the year. She used to spend weeks decorating but these days they don’t even put up a tree. They skip birthdays, too. They say it’s been too hard to celebrate anything since their son’s death.

Tsega is the final accomplice to be convicted. Kristopher McLellan, the shooter, was convicted of first-degree murder, and the other two masked accomplices, Kyle Mullen and Dylon Barnett, were convicted of second-degree murder.

At the sentencing hearing last year for Dylon Barnett, Michael Swan’s father, Dale, stood up in court to finally put a human face on his family’s tragedy. 

Swan, a private man, told court: “I take exception that I have to do this in open court and before one of the very individuals responsible for my son’s death. This, in itself, I consider a form of victimization, but I realize this will be my only opportunity to try to put a human face on what has been, up to now a very cold, clinical, detached legal process.”

It was a moving victim-impact statement.

He told court: “As a father, I consider myself a failure. Ultimately, it was my job to protect my child, to identify the dangers and do whatever was required to deal with them. I thought I was doing this, but it proved not to be enough. I must live with this guilt for the rest of my life.”

At the same sentencing hearing last year, the victim’s tearful mother, Rea, told court her life will never be the same.

“Just enjoying a beautiful sunny day, a good meal or even a laugh at a good joke brings with it a feeling of guilt,” she said. “How can I enjoy these things? My son is dead … I have been robbed of my son and the joys of life. … There remains a large hole in my heart that will never go away.

They described their dead son as a natural athlete who could make you laugh. And, they said, he never held a grudge.

Swan sold only marijuana, and loved to smoke it while watching hockey in his bedroom like many suburban teens.

He spent the last night of his life with his girlfriend, watching Olympic hockey.

And so for money and weed, young Michael Swan was executed in his own bedroom.

Tsega, wearing a suit, walked out of court Thursday a free man for another day, awaiting his sentence.

The maximum penalty for manslaughter is life in prison.

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Graffiti artist Drone and his girlfriend worked for 10 nights to create this tribute to slain Barrhaven teen Michael Swan.

In a surprise alibi that silenced Court Room 34, Gurpreet Ronald’s defence team said Tuesday that their client was out having tea with a doctor when her lover’s wife was killed.

In a brief yet strong opening address for Ronald’s long-awaited defence, Jessica Abou-Eid revealed the alibi and told the jury her client didn’t kill Jagtar Gill, but that she found her body and feared she’d be blamed for it.

“She genuinely believed that the finger would be pointed at her, and here we are,” Abou-Eid told the jury.

The defence lawyer then started dismantling the Crown’s case, noting it took 27 days and 33 witnesses to present it. Ronald’s legal team is going to call two witnesses, and the first, Gurpreet Ronald, took the stand briefly on Tuesday in her own defence.

“The Crown will tell you all the pieces of the puzzle fit,” in a murder plot hatched so they could “selfishly be together,” the lawyer told court.

“Gurpreet Ronald is not here before you because she killed Jagtar Gill. She stands before you because she was the mistress,” Abou-Eid declared.

She wasn’t the mistress who wanted more, she said.

Ronald, 37, and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 killing of his wife, Jagtar. The 43-year-old woman was slashed and bludgeoned to death in her Barrhaven home as she recovered from surgery.

According to Ronald’s version of events on the day in question, she only discovered the body after the killing. She is expected to testify in detail about how her blood got on the carpet and on the baseboards upstairs. She is also expected to explain other incriminating evidence, notably why she dumped a murder weapon and bloody glove along an NCC trail. She’s also to offer an explanation as to why she didn’t call 911.

Her lawyer asked the jury to pay close attention to Ronald’s testimony.

“While you carefully listen to Gurpreet Ronald, ask yourself, ‘For what benefit would this woman kill Jagtar Gill?'”

Ronald spoke from the stand about her new life in Ottawa after growing up in India. She said she had drifted away from her religion for a bit, and married “out of culture” because an arranged union wasn’t for her. She told court that she worked hard, styling hair by day and driving an OC Transpo bus at night. She said she was clocking 80 hours a week at OC Transpo (the equivalent of about 12 hours a day, seven days a week).

Ronald recalled the time she met her husband. “It was love at first sight,” she told court.

“He was my Prince Charming,” she recalled.

They fell in love quickly and married in secret three months later. They later told their families, and Ronald said hers was upset. Still, her family later presented her with a long-bought bridal gown, with all the gold and “bling bling,” she said.

She said Jason Ronald was a man who had big dreams, loads of ambition and charisma.

But their love, as the court has heard, didn’t last long. Jason Ronald, who’s now awaiting a divorce, testified earlier this week that Gurpreet came at him with a knife at least three times. That they were both having affairs and sick of fighting over money, the trial has heard.

In fact, one of Gurpreet’s lawyers, Michael Smith, hammered at Jason Ronald’s credibility for hours during his time on the stand, accusing him of treating his longtime wife as nothing more than a paycheque.

The police theory is that lovers Bhupinderpal Gill and Gurpreet Ronald, who are both OC Transpo drivers, plotted to kill Jagtar Gill, 43, so they could be together because divorce was not an option. But court has heard that divorce is very much a reality in the Sikh community, with one of Bhupinderpal Gill’s sisters testifying Tuesday that some 23 people in her family are divorced.

Ronald’s DNA was found at the scene of the murder, and police believe she slashed and bludgeoned Jagtar Gill to death while Bhupinderpal was out running errands at a prescribed time.

Both accused killers have admitted that while they hid murder weapons, neither had anything to do with the crime that rocked Barrhaven.

Jagtar Gill was killed on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. She was lying on the sofa in the living-room, recovering from surgery.

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Gurpreet Ronald says she wishes she had just turned a heel the day she found her secret lover’s wife dead. 

It was Jan. 29, 2014, and Ronald said she had gone to Jagtar Gill’s house in Barrhaven to pay a visit and pick up some tools. Nobody answered the unlocked door, so she let herself in, took her shoes off and hung up her coat. She called out “Hello,” but all she heard was the TV in the background.

She was walking toward to the kitchen, she said, when she made the horrifying discovery. The body of Jagtar Gill, slashed and bludgeoned to death, lay in a pool of blood on the living-room floor. 

“I was shocked. … She was on her back. … I saw her neck cut off, it was wide open. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was freaking out,” Ronald testified at her murder trial Wednesday.

Ronald, 37, took the stand for a second day to try to explain away the incriminating evidence against her — from how her blood was found at the scene to why she hid the weapon used to kill Gill.

Ronald and her lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, are on trial for the 2014 killing of his wife. The police theory is that the accused, both OC Transpo drivers, conspired to kill her so they could finally be together.

Ronald has insisted she is innocent, but her account of what happened the day of the killing has gone untold until now. 

She was running out of breath, she said. She may have screamed or yelled.

She thought she was going to faint, so she steadied herself with her hands and feet on the bloody living-room floor.

“I felt something under my feet. I saw a knife. I think I grabbed it. It was my right hand. I had touched the knife, then I threw it on the floor,” she told the jury.

“I was nervous and scared. I wanted to walk away from it.”

She almost did walk away, but when she got to the front door, she realized she had blood on her hands, she said. And it was the blood of her secret lover’s wife.

She figured she’d be blamed for the killing because she was the mistress, she testified. Shaking in fear, she said she put on latex gloves and wiped her fingerprints off the bloody knife.

She was shaking so much she somehow cut herself. “I don’t know how. I was wiping and shaking. I nicked my hand, my finger … I saw I was bleeding,” she testified.

She thought she was going to faint again so she drank water from the tap in the kitchen sink. 

Then, to explain how police found her blood upstairs, Ronald testified that she went looking for a Band-Aid.

Ronald, who has insisted her innocence, gave her account under examination in chief by her lawyer, Michael Smith.

“You don’t call 911? You don’t call for help?” Smith asked.

“No. Because I would be blamed. … I’m standing there with the knife,” Ronald explained.

“I only thought about me — to protect me at that time,” she said.

She left with a bloody glove and knife, and went home.

“I was freaking out. I didn’t know what to do,” she recalled.

She called her lover in a panic. She asked Bhupinderpal Gill: “Do you know what’s going on? What the f—!”

“He just said he was busy and he hung up on me quickly,” Ronald said.

She called him back on his cellphone two minutes later at 12:38 p.m. Gill said he was at Sobeys so she went there after catching her breath.

Gill and his daughter were at the cash. She says she wanted to ask him what had happened at his place, but his daughter was there, and she was “holding back emotions” so all she asked him was if he wanted to go to Ikea with her.

He said no and mentioned he was expecting a guest at his place for 1 p.m.

She ended up dumping the bloody glove and knife along an NCC trail. (That evidence was found by a maintenance man who called police).

She later went home and cooked supper for her family.

It wasn’t long before the police came calling. It was around 9:30 p.m. and her kids were asleep so she asked the officer to whisper.

Then she started lying, telling the officer she didn’t know Jagtar and Bhupinderpal Gill.

“After what I had just seen, I wanted to distance myself from it,” Ronald said.

By the end of the 40-minute chat with the officer, Ronald told a different story, saying she knew them, worked with Bhupinderpal, styled his wife’s hair and that their children played together.

No matter the lies she told police, Ronald insists she had nothing to do with the killing and only happened upon it after the fact. 

The court has heard about a surprise alibi that has her having tea with a doctor at the time of the killing.

Jagtar Gill was killed on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. She had been home recovering from surgery. 

The trial continues Thursday in Room No. 34 at the Elgin Street courthouse with Ronald back on the stand.

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Gurpreet Ronald said she hadn’t wanted a divorce but was getting ready for one.

She closed the joint bank account, transferred assets, including gold, and talked to a lawyer.

Her husband, Jason Ronald, also an OC Transpo driver, had been threatening to divorce her for the past 10 years, she said. She said she took him seriously this time because he hadn’t been home in days. They were both having affairs, their finances were in chaos and their fights had turned violent, she said.

Ronald, 40, and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 41, also an OC driver, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 daytime killing of his wife, Jagtar Gill, 43. The intimate details of Ronald’s marriage leading up to the killing were revealed at her murder trial on Friday under a day-long grilling by assistant crown attorney Brian Holowka.

She was slashed and bludgeoned to death in her living room on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. The police theory is that they killed her so they could finally be together.

Ronald told the jury that she had not seen divorce as an option.

But Holowka charged that she had gone to great lengths to plan for one, pointing to a journal Ronald said she had kept to record facts in case the divorce got messy or, in her own words, extreme. 

The prosecutor also noted that a key theme in their disintegrating marriage was their finances, and claimed that Ronald helped her husband get a job at OC Transpo so he wouldn’t be a drain on her if they parted ways.

“It was part of your plan, to make him financially stable. … If he’s financially stable, it would lead to the path of divorce,” Holowka said.

Ronald maintained that she didn’t want a divorce but that everyone was pressuring her “to protect myself.”

She repeatedly told court that she still had hope for her marriage.

The prosecutor answered that by saying, “There’s no going back. You’re so done with him that you’re sending your friends photos of your husband’s girlfriend. … You’re tearing down the foundation of your relationship.”

“I didn’t see it that way but I see what you’re saying,” Ronald replied.

Then, in testimony that popped eyes in the gallery, Ronald told the court, “I don’t mean to be rude … but I’m better looking than her.”

The prosecutor guided the jury through a series of texts Ronald had sent to her friends, including one saying her husband’s mistress was “f—ing ugly.”

Ronald also maintained she had nothing to do with the killing of Jagtar Gill, someone she considered a friend. She said having a years-long affair with Gill’s husband was not her proudest moment.

And she stuck to her story, which explains why her blood was at the scene of the killing and why she ditched a bloody knife and gloves.

She said she had dropped by Jagtar Gill’s Barrhaven home to say hi and pick up some tools. She says she came upon the crime scene after the fact. Shocked at the horrifying discovery, Ronald said she felt like she was going to faint so she steadied herself on the blood-soaked carpet and accidentally stepped on the bloody knife. She says she doesn’t know what she was thinking. Her mind was racing and she was running out of breath, she said, adding that she picked up the knife, then threw it down. 

Fearing she’d be blamed for the killing because she was the mistress, she said she started covering her tracks.

In a panic, she said, she put on latex gloves and started wiping her fingerprints off the knife she had just handled. She said she was shaking so much that she somehow cut herself.  To explain how her blood got upstairs, she told court that she went looking for a bandage.

Ronald said she went for the front door, and decided to take the key evidence with her, all the way to an National Capital Commission trail where she dumped the gloves and knife.

The prosecutor noted that, through all of this, she never called 911.

“You never think, ‘This is insane, I’ve got to call the police?’ ” the prosecutor asked.

“That would have been the right thing to do, but I didn’t,” she said. “Looking back, there are some things I could’ve done differently, but I didn’t.”

The prosecutor accused Ronald of fabricating her version of events, bringing up what she had said to police when they came calling. She first said she didn’t even know the Gills and originally said she hadn’t been to their home on the day in question, let alone dump the evidence.

Her co-accused, Bhupinderpal Gill, testified last week that he, too, didn’t have anything to do with the killing, and said he found his dead wife after the fact. He, too, dumped key evidence, including a weightlifting bar used in the killing. He also said he hid evidence for fear he’d be blamed in his wife’s killing.

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Gurpreet Ronald was branded a liar on the stand on Monday, accused of changing her story again and again about what she was doing on the day she allegedly killed her secret lover’s wife in a jealous rage.

“You’re changing your story to narrow the window of opportunity you had to kill,” charged assistant Crown attorney Brian Holowka.

Ronald and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 killing of his wife, Jagtar Gill. She was slashed and bludgeoned to death on the living-room floor of her Barrhaven home. 

The police theory is that the secret lovers conspired and executed a murder plot so they could be together. The accused killers, both OC Transpo drivers, have raised separate alibis and both say they only, and at separate times, happened upon the murder scene after the fact.

Ronald, 37, admitted on the stand on Monday that she lied to police about her whereabouts on the day in question to distance herself from the murder for fear she’d be blamed because she was the mistress.

Ronald was also grilled about a key meeting she had with Gill at a Sobey’s after the murder. She initially presented it to police as a chance meeting when it was anything but. Phone records show Ronald called Gill three times on the day in question and he told her he was at the grocery store.  

She said she went there to ask Gill what was going on at his house. She testified that she had gone to the Gill home to pick up tools and that’s when she happened on the murder scene. The horrifying discovery left her in shock, and she said she felt like she was going to faint, so she steadied herself on the blood-soaked living-room carpet, and accidentally stepped on a knife, one of the murder weapons.

She picked up the knife, she said, then threw it down. Then she put on latex gloves to wipe her fingerprints off the knife for fear of being blamed for the killing, she recounted. She was shaking so much, she somehow cut herself.

The Crown has charged that she in fact cut herself in a violent, deadly struggle with Jagtar Gill.

The prosecution also said that Ronald put on a star performance in “theatre” when she returned to the scene of the crime and cast herself to police as a concerned neighbour, who covered her mouth and repeated “Jagtar” when an officer said she had died.

Ronald has also tried to explain how her blood was found upstairs in the master bedroom, in the walk-in closet, and in the bathroom. She said she went upstairs looking for a band-aid. 

The trial continues Tuesday.

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The wife of a soldier at CFB Petawawa is suing military police for false arrest, wrongful imprisonment and assault after they busted down her door in the middle of the night and forced her out of bed at gunpoint, then pushed her face down on the floor only to break her hand by aggressively pulling her up by the handcuffs, according to a statement of claim.

It was April 8, 2016, around 2:16 a.m., and military police had been staking out Brittany Alexa Stratuik’s home for hours after they got a call that there were two dead bodies inside her home, that the back parking lot was rigged with bombs and that there were outlawed guns in the house. During the stakeout, military police enlisted the help of the Ontario Provincial Police, who dispatched a K-9 unit, according to the claim filed in Ontario Superior Court.

But there were no dead bodies. There were no bombs. And there were no outlawed guns. 

Military police were advised by the OPP that the call was in fact a hoax, and that there had been similar swatting calls earlier at different locations across Ontario, but they busted down the door with a battering ram just the same, according to the court filings.

Though the OPP told the military police they had investigated and that the call was a prank, the base police stormed in with guns drawn, according to the claim that has yet to be tested in court. Stratuik was home alone and in bed. Her husband was out of town.

According to the $850,000 claim — plus undisclosed special damages — Stratuik says she was ordered out of bed at gunpoint and onto the floor and told to shut up. She told a military police officer that she recently had surgery on her right hand. She said she started to comply but before she could an officer pushed her face down on the floor.

She was handcuffed and then yanked up off the floor, causing her severe pain. Her statement of claim includes a surgeon’s confirmation that her hand was broken during the arrest and that the break was unrelated to her previous injury. Surgery was required after the incident. She also suffered nerve damage and has no feeling in her right hand, and has no feeling in her fourth and fifth fingers, according to court filings.

Stratuik is seeking undisclosed damages for “assault, arrest and injuries suffered from embarrassment, humiliation, exhaustion, pain and stress due to the events.” Stratuik’s claim says she no longer feels safe in her own home and suffers from anxiety attacks.

After they took off her handcuffs, one military police officer told Stratuik that he had “scared the s–t out of” her neighbour after pointing his C8 rifle at him, according to the statement of claim. The same military police officer allegedly told her that it was a “sh—y situation but I was just doing (my) job.”

The Department of National Defence has not yet filed a statement of defence, but plans to.

In an email, a DND spokesperson said the statement of claim was received last week and “we are currently looking into the allegations.” The Canadian Armed Forces are “committed to protecting the safety of all members of the DND/CAF community,” the spokesperson said. 

Asked for comment, Stratuik’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, said: “She was treated in a shocking way and suffered mental and physical damage and that’s the reason for the lawsuit.” The lawyer added that her client “may never have full use of that hand again.”

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The disgraced Mountie who tortured and starved his 11-year-old son in a darkened Kanata basement for six months was originally charged with assaulting another, younger son in an alleged offence that dated back to July 2010, some 2 1/2 years before the older boy escaped his chains in search of water. 

That charge — assault with a weapon (a wooden spoon) — was withdrawn on Oct. 31, 2013, and a family court later ruled the ex-Mountie, who had already confessed to chaining up his oldest son to starve and burn him, was allowed unsupervised visits with his two younger children, including the boy he had earlier been charged with beating. That charge was withdrawn because the Crown attorney’s office concluded there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

The unsupervised visits continued until last month, when the man and his wife — both of whom were on bail — were convicted in the horrific case, in which their 11-year-old was subjected to severe abuse and disturbing videotaped interrogations by the former counter-terrorism officer.

In one of the chilling videos that reduced defence lawyers and police to tears at trial, the tiny and frightened boy begged: “I want my family back.”

In the videos, the father inflicts religious-themed interrogations on his naked son, demanding the shackled and emaciated boy repent, and screaming that he ”will weep blood” for his so-called sins. At one point, he enlisted a Catholic priest to perform an exorcism.

The young boy spent the last month of his cruel captivity trying to escape the horrors of the basement, where he was chained to a post as he slept and forced to use a slop bucket for a toilet while the rest of his family went about their daily routines upstairs. He weighed only 50 pounds when he escaped and emergency room doctors who cried at his state said he almost starved to death. The responding police officer likened the boy to a concentration camp survivor. 

The father, who the court heard thought his son was the devil, was allowed to play, unsupervised, with his other sons on weekends until his Nov. 21 conviction. 

The unsupervised visits happened outside Ottawa, and the children’s stepmother, who was also convicted, was not present, as the parents were prohibited from communicating until after conviction.

The tortured boy had been sent to to live with his father after his mother died in 2009. The boy’s maternal grandmother went to court back in 2011 to try to win visitation rights, but a judge rejected her motion.

The boy was distraught about his mother’s death and torn between his maternal and paternal family.

The judge who dismissed the grandmother’s motion relied on the Mountie’s evidence and the child psychologist he enlisted.

The psychologist recommended the boy should remain in the full-time care of the father and his wife.

That’s the same psychologist who told the boy’s father in 2010, the torture trial would hear, that he couldn’t “terrorize” his son, and who warned him that if he kept punishing the boy, the psychologist would have to call in the child-protection office. It would be three more years before the boy’s escape.

The judge who heard the case involving the grandparents was aware of allegations the Mountie was an abusive father.

Still, the judge ruled that the boy’s maternal family could not have visitation rights. In the 2011 decision, the judge granted the father custody and he was ordered to send report cards and a school photograph of the boy to his maternal relatives. If there was correspondence between the boy and his maternal family, the judge ruled, the Mountie was allowed to read and screen all the letters sent to the boy.

Two years after that ruling — on Feb. 12, 2013 — the boy escaped.

His father and stepmom are now both in jail awaiting sentencing. The stepmother was convicted of less severe crimes against the child, including assault with a weapon, a wooden spoon.

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When you’re on patrol, even out in the suburbs, a single minute can mean life or death, and on the night of February 12, 2013, Ottawa police Const. Cindy Cybulski took that extra minute for a closer look at a boy who was starving to death.

It was arguably the most significant minute in the veteran police officer’s career.

The officer was responding to a call about an 11-year-old boy in Kanata. There were two calls — one from the boy’s father who reported him missing, and another from a neighbour who, after finding the boy, started walking him back to his house but then called 911 after the boy collapsed in a snowbank as he walked. 

The officer, dispatched with the information that a neighbour had found a boy reported missing, arrived on scene with paramedics. 

So did the boy’s father, who quickly identified himself as an RCMP officer, and started spinning a sad story about the hardships of raising a problem child. 

Const. Cybulski said at first she sympathized with the father’s story of being at his wits’ end with a troubled son. “As a parent, I was devastated for him … I was really feeling for this guy,” she’d later testify in court. 

The officer was so moved by the father’s story that she comforted him by putting her hand on his shoulder.

But her comfort turned cold when the RCMP officer said his son was so hard to handle he had to tie him up. The RCMP officer also warned the constable that she might find bruises on the boy because, he said “I lose it sometimes.”

It was at this point that the constable went to check on the boy again, this time under the bright lights in the back of the ambulance. In court, the constable described the emaciated boy like this: 

“It was like a concentration-camp movie. His chest was just bones — you could see every rib,” Cybulski said.

The boy also had gouges on his wrists and ankles from his chains.

The constable wept on the stand, saying “and a minute earlier I just wanted to give him back to his dad.”

Instead, the constable arrested the RCMP officer, who along with his wife, were found guilty on Nov. 21. The father and stepmom — whose names are under a publication ban to protect the identity of the boy — are awaiting sentencing for their crimes. (The father was convicted of assault, sexual assault, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessities of life. The stepmom was found guilty of assault with a weapon and failing to provide the necessities of life. You can read more about the case through the related links below.)

Related

• Ottawa Mountie who tortured son once accused of abusing other child
• Why Ottawa's child-torturing Mountie got bail: 'It approaches an explainable crime'
• 'Cruel captivity': Ottawa Mountie found guilty in child-torture case of 11-year-old son

When the boy finally escaped from his family’s darkened Kanata basement — its windows were covered — he’d endured at least six months of starvation and torture. Weighing only 50 pounds, the boy was first seen trudging through knee-deep snow in backyards in search of water. One neighbour spotted him trying to draw water from his garden tap so he slid open the back patio door and filled up the starving kid’s water bottle and sent him on his way. That neighbour said the boy looked like a ghost.

The boy later showed up at another neighbour’s front door around suppertime looking to speak to her son. She told court that she hadn’t seen the boy in a year and a half.

He used to be “chubby, happy and full of energy,” she said. “He was completely changed. I couldn’t recognize him.”

The boy appeared nervous, she said, and fumbled for change from his pocket, offering it while asking if he could stay at her home for the night.

She started walking the boy back to his own home, but when the boy complained of back pain, her husband called the police.

That’s when Const. Cybulski showed up, and after coming sliver-close to reuniting the starving boy with his abusive father, she took an extra minute and spared a young boy from more torture down in a darkened Kanata basement.

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In 2013, while the RCMP were still investigating how a suspected terrorist had quietly left Canada to join ISIL the previous year, Canada’s spy agency informed the Mounties they had in fact already known the intimate details of the terrorism suspect’s final hours before he boarded a plane for Syria, new court records reveal.

John Maguire left Canada in December 2012 to join ISIL in Syria, where he was featured in a propaganda video declaring religious war on his home country. The Islamic State reported Maguire died fighting in 2015, though his death has never been confirmed. 

Before he left for Syria, Maguire was the alleged star terrorism recruit of Ottawa’s Awso Peshdary, 26, who was charged in February 2015 with recruiting, financing and facilitating terrorism.

And the RCMP’s case against Peshdary is where new details have emerged about the Mounties investigation into an alleged Ottawa terror network. 

The RCMP’s case that yielded charges against Peshdary, 26, was built on a foundation so shaky that investigators were twice turned down when they went to get search warrants against Maguire.

Ontario Court Justice Peter Wright refused to sign off on the RCMP warrants on Aug. 12, 2013, saying the Mounties had fallen “very far short of the requisite standards expected at law.” 

The judge also said the RCMP had “failed to establish that its sources of this investigation are reliable or trustworthy as is required.” This was the second time a judge had refused an RCMP warrant. The details of the first refusal were not contained in the court records. 

Six months after Maguire joined ISIS in Syria the Mounties were still investigating how he had left the country. They also had Maguire’s friend, Peshdary, in their sights and had linked them but needed more information in order to get a search warrant for electronic and computer data.

The Mounties then asked CSIS for help and it turned out that Maguire didn’t just slip out of the country unnoticed. Indeed, CSIS knew all about Maguire’s final hours before boarding a flight to Istanbul back in December 2012.

In an Aug. 26, 2013 letter to an RCMP chief superintendent, a CSIS acting director general revealed all the details of Maguire’s exit, from who drove him to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport in Montreal on Dec. 6 (an Ottawa man, accompanied by suspected accomplice Peshdary) right down to where he exchanged currency before checking in at a Royal Air Morocco counter.

CSIS also forwarded the Mounties several audio recordings of intercepted conversations between Peshdary and Maguire to help them finally firm up that they were friends. 

New details about the case, including the times the Mounties were denied search warrants, are contained in a court application filed by Peshdary’s lawyer Solomon Friedman who is requesting third-party records from CSIS so he can properly defend his client. 

It wasn’t until the RCMP got the CSIS information that they were able to secure search warrants on their third try against Maguire and later Peshdary, and without access to the affidavits and source documents used to win the warrants, Friedman says he is unable to properly challenge the judicial authorizations. 

The records application also reveal there were parallel investigations of Peshdary by the RCMP and CSIS, but it’s clear the agencies weren’t sharing information at that point.

Further muddying the waters, the documents reveal that the Mounties investigation against Peshdary was about to expand to include another target, Ottawa’s Abdullah Milton, after the two had text messaged.

What the Mounties didn’t know was that their new target was actually a CSIS asset and had been for two years — however, the extent of Milton’s role as an asset remains unclear.

According to March 17, 2014 notes of an RCMP inspector, counter-terrorism investigators said Milton (the CSIS asset) may have surreptitiously videotaped the inside of its undercover operator’s apartment. It couldn’t have been too undercover, as the RCMP inspector also told CSIS that three others — including Peshdary — appeared to be searching the undercover operator’s apartment for listening devices. 

Milton, a Muslim convert originally from New Brunswick, stopped working as a CSIS asset overnight and started working as a paid RCMP agent with instruction to befriend and spy on suspected members of an ISIL network in Ottawa, including convicted terrorists Suliman Mohamed, and twins Ashton and Carlos Larmond.

Milton went from being an RCMP target to a prized informant. 

In his application for the records, Friedman noted that Milton is a critical witness and his credibility will be a central issue at trial. “Information that he was under investigation by CSIS is likely relevant to his credibility” the lawyer wrote.

The RCMP agent was paid at least $550,000 to wear a wire against the Ottawa targets, and was later paid an additional $250,000 in advance to testify at preliminary hearings that never happened. 

None of the terrorism charges — financing and recruiting — has been proven against Peshdary, who remains in jail awaiting trial, which is scheduled for 2018.

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The boy who escaped the horrors of his Kanata basement in February 2013 says he’s doing much better these days and though he tries to forget his gruelling ordeal, his scars are a daily reminder.

“I wish they weren’t there,” the boy, now 14, said in a videotaped victim-impact statement shown at his stepmother’s sentencing hearing Tuesday.

When kids at school ask about his scars, he tries to change the subject or simply says it’s a long story, court heard.

He said it’s hard to escape the painful memories of torture and starvation at the hands of his father, an ex-RCMP officer.

Sometimes he’s happy, and sometimes he cries randomly.

“It really depends on the day,” he said.

His father, a former counter-terrorism officer, was convicted last month, sexual assault, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessities of life. His stepmother, 38, was convicted in a lesser role on charges of assault with a weapon (a wooden spoon) and failing to provide the necessities of life.

Related

• Chief orders full review of Mountie child torture case: 'What did we know at what time?'

The boy was shackled, starved and burned in the basement while the rest of his family — including two younger brothers — went about their daily routine upstairs.

His stepmother didn’t testify at trial but on Tuesday she stood in the prisoner’s box and expressed remorse for failing her son and said she was afraid of her out-of-control husband.

“I was scared and felt stuck. I did not see the options before me and believed anything I could have done would have made things worse,” the federal government executive told court.

“I saw things standing from my husband’s perspective, and under pressure and fear, I lost my voice. I was constantly walking on eggshells and I did not see a way out.

“I’m very sorry that I failed him as a mother. I failed him when he needed me. I failed him in every possible way.”

She said there’s nothing she can say or do to “take back the time and save him.”

The stepmother said she constantly thinks of what her adopted son endured down in the basement.

“There is not one day that goes by that I don’t think of the loneliness, the fear, the pain and the betrayal that he must have felt. I’m deeply sorry. He taught me more than I ever did to him. I love him and I always will. I hope one day he will find it in his heart to forgive me,” she told a hushed courtroom.

But prosecutor Marie Dufort told court it was a little late for remorse.

“He was dying. She knew that and she withheld food. There was no prey that could’ve been more easy than (this boy),” the assistant Crown attorney said.

“Her moral culpability is at its highest, because she could have reached out but she didn’t,” Dufort told court.

Earlier at the sentencing hearing, the boy’s aunt delivered a victim-impact statement that brought some — including a special police constable — to tears.

She told court the stepmother betrayed the boy by not protecting him, or, at the very least, calling someone who could.

The aunt then addressed the stepmother directly, saying:

“We cannot shield him from the details of this trial, and eventually he will learn that his mom, his protector, never spoke. For him, your silence will be the final, ear-piercing screech of a mother abandoning her child. One more deep and lasting wound,” she said.

“You were the only other adult in his hell,” she told a hushed courtroom.

The stepmother kept her head down in the prisoner’s box as the aunt continued, saying it was beyond her comprehension how the woman ignored the boy’s pleas for help down in the basement.

“You were the only one who could have rescued him … your absolute and total betrayal of your baby, our baby, has left us shattered,” she said.

The boy was also videotaped by his father as the ex-Mountie inflicted disturbing, religious-themed interrogations in the couple’s Kanata home, demanding that the shackled and emaciated boy repent, and screaming that he would “weep blood” for his so-called sins. At one point, the father enlisted a priest to perform an exorcism.

In one of the horrifying videos that reduced defence lawyers and police to tears at trial, the tiny, frightened and starving boy begged: “I want my family back.”

The father took the stand in his own defence at trial, and portrayed himself as the victim and tried to explain that he thought his boy was possessed. At his wit’s end, he said he started confining his son and rationing his meals.

The young boy spent the last month of his captivity trying to escape the horrors of the basement, where he was chained to a post as he slept and forced to use a slop bucket for a toilet.

He managed to loosen his chains and escape on Feb. 12, 2013. One neighbour, who likened the boy to a ghost, gave him water after he spotted the boy trying to drink from the garden tap in the backyard. The boy went to another neighbour and asked for water and offered pocket change if he could stay the night. The boy was sent back home but, along the way, he collapsed in a snowbank. The neighbour called 911.

When the police came, the boy came close to being returned to his Mountie father, who spun a tale of a wild, out-of-control son. The story prompted a responding officer to put her hand on the father’s shoulder as a form of comfort. But soon after, when looking at the boy under the bright lights in the back of an ambulance, it was clear the child had been subjected to severe abuse. The Ottawa police officer said it was as if she was looking at someone who had survived a concentration camp.

In his police interview back in 2013, the father admitted to the crimes against the child but tried to justify it as discipline.

At trial, the father mounted a failed post-traumatic stress disorder defence.

The boy weighed only 50 pounds when he escaped and emergency-room doctors said he had almost starved to death.

The stepmother’s defence lawyer, Ann London-Weinstein, has asked the judge for time served while prosecutors are requesting a five-year prison term.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger is scheduled to sentence her on Jan. 20, 2017.

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It would be a month before the police, and time, caught up with Devontay Hackett.

Wanted in the 2014 prom-night slaying of Brandon Volpi, Hackett was later arrested in Toronto, and while his life on the lam was four hours away from the scene of the crime, he was still wearing — literally — a key piece of incriminating evidence: his watch.

The one that still had the victim’s blood on it.

The jury at Devontay Hackett’s second-degree murder trial heard Tuesday about the DNA, along with other Crown evidence — including video footage of the deadly violence that capped a night of prom parties for the Class of 2014.

Some of the video was captured by hotel guests leaning over their balconies, documenting the bloody brawl below, outside of Les Suites Hotel in downtown Ottawa on June 7, 2014. 

In one cellphone video, Hackett, then 18, is seen engaged in a vicious, seconds-long fight with Volpi.

Devontay Hackett.

The video shows the accused killer holding an object in his right hand, the one he uses to lunge at Volpi before running away down an alley.

It appears as though Volpi is clutching his neck, and he later collapses by a statue outside the hotel. His throat had been slashed, and he suffered a fatal stab wound to his heart, the jury heard. A security guard and others came to his aid, applying pressure to his neck and administering CPR.

The cellphone video shown in court is not ideal quality. It’s sometimes blurry and shot from a distance and, if not for the admission of the defence, it would be hard to pick Devontay Hackett out of the crowd. 

The chilling, final images of young Brandon Volpi were shown over and over again in court as his father, Danny Volpi, sat in silence in the gallery.

Not even the “heroic” efforts of surgeons could save Brandon Volpi, assistant Crown attorney Michael Boyce said in his opening address to the jury — four women, eight men.

The prosecutor said Volpi was having a good time with friends, first at the prom at the NAC, and later at the Camp Fortune after-party. Then it was a shuttle bus to the hotel, where things turned ugly.

“And yet, as the sun was coming up in the early hours of June 14, and some prom celebrations were winding down, Brandon Volpi’s life was coming to an end,” Boyce told the jury.

The trouble began when one of Volpi’s friends was having a lousy prom night, and was in some sort of distress with another group of grads from another high school. It may have been a fight over a missing cellphone, the jury heard. 

Either way, the high schooler was afraid to walk to his neighbouring hotel so Volpi agreed to escort him. 

It is the Crown’s theory, anchored in hotel surveillance video and cellphone footage, that Hackett and a gang of friends waited for them outside. And that’s when the deadly brawl began.

The jury was also shown hotel surveillance video of Hackett later running into the alley between Les Suites Hotel and Novotel. Hackett is then seen getting into the backseat of a car only to leave moments later, heading south toward Daly Avenue. 

Police later recovered key evidence in the car and alley — including the blood of the accused and victim.

Le Droit news photographer Martin Roy, on his way to the scene of the crime, discovered a discarded shirt that also had the blood of the accused and victim on it, the jury heard. 

According to prosecutors, Hackett then made his way up to the University of Ottawa and made his getaway by hopping on the 95, eastbound.

Hackett was captured by police in Toronto a month later, and the prosecutor noted that he was still wearing the same watch, the one with Brandon Volpi’s blood on it. 

“The only reasonable conclusion,” the prosecutor told the jury, “is that Mr. Hackett is guilty of murder.”

Hackett, 21, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and is being defended by Joseph Addelman and Samantha Robinson. 

Hacket paid close attention to the videos and often took notes in the prisoner’s box.

The Crown’s case against Devontay Hackett continues Wednesday.

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The police case against accused prom-night killer Devontay Hackett is anchored in video and DNA evidence.

And on Wednesday, the jury at his second-degree murder trial again was shown a key video of the deadly June 7, 2014, brawl outside Les Suites Hotel. Only this time, the jury’s guided tour was not the police version.

It was Joseph Addelman’s. 

The defence lawyer’s frame-by-frame dissection of the blurry video came during his cross-examination of Mike Ross, the civilian police employee who collected video footage at the behest of detectives investigating the prom-night slaying of 18-year-old Brandon Volpi. His throat was slashed and he had been knifed in the heart — the fatal wound, according to doctors who pronounced him dead at 5:06 a.m. 

Addelman established that Hackett, 21, is not seen holding a knife in any of the hundreds of frames from cellphone video taken by high school graduates leaning over their hotel balconies. The police theory is that Hackett slashed Volpi, using a knife in his right hand, then ran away down an alley, hopped a bus, then a cab and lived as a fugitive for a month before police arrested him in Toronto.

The defence lawyer drew the jury’s attention to a scene in the deadly brawl, notably when Hackett is seen hitting someone in the head with his right hand. Addelman noted, again, that there’s no knife in Hackett’s hand in the streaky and blotchy cellphone videos. It’s also hard to figure out what’s going on in the brawl because the cellphone footage provides only an aerial view.

In the civilian police employee’s examination-in-chief, Ross often pointed Hackett out to jurors as he guided them through the police version of the video, but under cross-examination he acknowledged that he didn’t know Hackett or the victim and had been told who they were by homicide detectives. Ross also acknowledged that while he collected hours and hours of video, the Crown only played minutes of it to the jury. 

Addelman also established that while there were several young men seen in the deadly brawl, the police video man was only tasked with tracking the steps of Hackett.

After questioning Ross about his training, Addelman established that the civilian police employee had no specialized skills to interpret the body movements on the video.

“So you would be in the same position as any of us who watch movies or videos?” Addelman asked.

“Yes,” Ross replied.

Hackett was later arrested in Toronto a month after the killing. The jury has heard that he was wearing the same watch on the night in question, with the victim’s blood still on it.

Hackett has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. His trial continues Thursday at the Elgin Street courthouse.

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They marched down Jasmine Crescent more than 200-strong on Sunday afternoon.

Children, the elderly, parents, students, teachers, school principals, scouts, ministers, the police chief, the mayor and the neighbourhood’s councilman, Tim Tierney, marched along the street, starting close to where 20-year-old Nooredin Hassan was gunned down last year, then past the Jasmine Towers, where in April 2015, Connor Stevenson, 18, was knifed to death in the stairwell, not far from the parking lot where in September 2015, Issaiah Clacher, 17, was stabbed to death.

But it’s been more than a year since homicide detectives have been called to Jasmine, where there is now a surge of hope as fear fades and crime is down, according to Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau. (The police chief’s appearance drew applause, as did the mayor’s and the march’s main organizer, Tim Tierney.)

Everyone agreed that the biggest catalyst for change was the simplest – just getting together, as a community, to talk it out and try to make Jasmine a better, safer place.

The neighbourhood looks a lot different than it did a year ago. The east-end street is now lined with branch sculptures by top Wakefield environment artist Marc Walter, there are now music lessons and a new hockey and football program. Coun. Tierney is also working on building a decent outdoor rink, and hopefully one day a community centre.

But not long ago, this was the kind of street that kept Joe Cherfan’s parents inside their fourth-floor apartment for a month last year.

Three homicides were enough to keep them from setting foot outside.

“It scared them … They were afraid of going out,” said Cherfan, a community volunteer who lives in the Jasmine Towers. 

Cherfan, 22, says he feels safer in his neighbourhood and reports that he hasn’t witnessed a drug deal in a year and has no worries about walking around after sundown. The folks who work at the street’s food bank said that a year ago the neighbourhood would take a rapid turn at nightfall, but last summer the biggest crime was that someone was stealing vegetables from the community garden. (In response, they put up a sign saying “DO NOT PICK THE PRODUCE”)

Cherfan, like many at the march, is proud to call Jasmine his home. “I’m part of this community and it’s a part of me,” he said.

He hasn’t seen a police car in a long time either, a sign that things are turning around, he said.

Before the free hot dogs – courtesy of Enbridge – there were speeches. The police chief told the crowd to keep up their “amazing work” and reminded them that the police department is with them “every step of the way.”

Mayor Jim Watson praised the crowd for taking the helm and setting the neighbourhood on a good course.

Tierney said: “The work is not done, but at the same time, we have come a long way. And we’re not stopping.”

If branding is any indication that things are getting better in the neighbourhood, the Jasmine Safety Committee has been renamed Vision Jasmine.

“I love Jasmine and we’re doing a lot of work to make it an even better community. It’s a lot more than just waving signs and eating hot dogs,” Tierney said.

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