Rene Merasty, 24, pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder when his judge-alone trial began Monday in Saskatoon Court of King's Bench.
Warning: Story contains graphic details
On a bright July afternoon, police pulled up to an apartment building in Saskatoon’s Confederation Park neighbourhood after getting a frantic call from a neighbour, saying a girl was screaming in the parking lot.
Officers found a red Chrysler Neon and opened its back door. In the back seat, a woman’s body was covered in a white hospital blanket; a plastic grocery bag was tied in a knot around her neck, Const. Jason Zubkow testified during the first day of Rene Jobe Merasty’s judge-alone trial in Saskatoon Court of King’s Bench.
On Monday morning, Merasty, 24, pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 19-year-old Hailey Belanger-Weeseekase.
Dewar said the girl will testify that she saw Merasty strangle the victim in the apartment bathroom and force the handle of a toilet plunger down her throat.
The plunger, a wet, bloody $20 bill found in the bathtub and swabs from dried blood stains on the walls and toilet seat were sent for DNA testing, court heard. Sgt. Scott Joslin with the forensic identification unit testified that they all contained Belanger-Weeseekase’s DNA. He attended the autopsy and said he is aware that she died from strangulation.
Zubkow said he initially administered Naloxone — medication that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose — when he found Belanger-Weeseekase, and performed CPR on her with a mask after she had briefly vomited.
He agreed with defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle that Belanger-Weeseekase was displaying symptoms consistent with an overdose.
“Was the bag tied around her neck consistent with an overdose?” Dewar asked on re-examination. The officer said no.
A video from the apartment, taken by Joslin, documented the bathroom, where a bottle of bleach was found underneath a black garbage bag and near a bucket between the tub and the toilet.
During cross-examination, he said it looked like the bathroom had been cleaned. Alcohol bottles were strewn about the apartment, but no drugs were found, Joslin said.
Shortly after the victim’s body was found, Merasty was arrested nearby. There was blood on his hands in his shirtless arrest photo, which was shown in court.
Dewar said Merasty, the teen girl and the victim belonged to the same gang. Merasty was the “higher up” in the ranking system, while Belanger-Weeseekase was below him and the teen girl was below her.
The three of them were drinking and using drugs at a different apartment earlier in the day. Court heard they left when a confrontation with rival gang members ended in Merasty and his friends being sprayed with bear mace.
Things “took a turn” when Merasty, Belanger-Weeseekase and the teen girl returned to the Diefenbaker apartment suite where Merasty’s relatives lived, Dewar said.
She told court the teen girl will testify that even though she was close with the victim, she helped Merasty because “when someone higher up in the gang tells you to do something, you do it.”
On surveillance video from the apartment, two people who Const. Allisha Stewart identified as the teen girl and Merasty struggle to drag Belanger-Weeseekase’s blanket-wrapped body out the ground floor patio and put her in the back seat of the red Neon parked outside.
Both of them attempt to drive the car, but it stalls. The man identified as Merasty gets out of the car and starts talking to a neighbour. Dewar, in her opening statement, said the court will hear that he was asking them to call 9-1-1, leaving Belanger-Weeseekase’s body in the car.
The pair can be seen walking their separate ways down the alley behind the apartment, just as a police cruiser pulls up.
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