Raymond Knife’s current court files. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski
This summer, someone called the cops after seeing a woman running down the street in a well-traveled area of Prince Albert.
Dispatch was told three men were chasing her, and one was holding a weapon – which ended up being a machete.
When officers made it to the South Hill business on Second Avenue West on Aug. 2 where the call came from, they found the woman nearby. She was unhurt.
Police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Mudry says officers pieced together the events of the previous few days after speaking with that woman. While Mudry can’t provide details because the matter is before the courts, a slew of charges against two men – Raymond Knife, 34, and Danny Knife, 23 – hint at a very disturbing few days for the victim.
The charges against Raymond include forcible confinement, assault with a cell phone and a book, uttering death threats, and carrying a machete with a dangerous intent.
Mudry says investigators believe the victim was in a relationship with one of the accused.
Police weren’t able to track Raymond down initially, but within three days Saskatoon police arrested him on a warrant. A new charge stemming from that arrest states that he, again, was in possession of a machete.
Knife has been in custody since August, and according to court records, had gotten out of prison only a few months earlier.
The month after he got out of prison, the RCMP was looking for him with questions in the case of missing woman Danielle Nyland. The RCMP had been asking for the public’s help in looking for Raymond because he may have had contact with Nyland before she went missing. Investigators were able to contact him soon after they put out the call for help. Nyland’s family had called Raymond an acquaintance of Nyland, who might have been at the party she was at on June 7.
Nyland went missing after that party and her body was later found near Shellbrook.
The RCMP has not updated any information on her case since early this summer, including details on the cause of her death. The public is not aware of whether it’s being considered suspicious.
Even though he’s been in custody since Aug. 5, Raymond has continued racking up charges. He’s under a no-contact order with the victim of the August attacks, but is alleged to have breached that multiple times in the past few months.
Raymond is back in court on New Year’s Eve for the Aug. 2 charges.
He has a trial set for those charges of breaching his no-contact order, among other things, set in March.