Victim Evan Tylan Bear. Photo courtesy Facebook memorial page.
WARNING: This story contains graphic content that may trouble some readers.
The Crown’s only eyewitness to the stabbing death of Evan Tylan Bear says his accused killer used a mop to clean up his blood as he lay dying on a kitchen floor.
Shelinda Vallier took the stand on Tuesday afternoon, the second day of the jury trial for Bear’s death.
The accused is Vallier’s stepsister of around 20 years, Robyn Laura Ermine. Ermine, 30, stared straight ahead as she sat in the prisoner’s box at Prince Albert Court of Queen’s Bench as Vallier testified, at times wiping her nose and eyes as she cried.
Vallier started off by describing the days leading up to Bear’s death on Feb. 21, 2015, saying she had been visiting the couple in their Muskoday home and had been drinking vodka and beer with them the night before.
Vallier said when they ran out of alcohol she went to bed, with everyone seemingly behaving much the way they had all night. Ermine and Bear were finishing up their drinks at the kitchen table, but Vallier said she later heard them yelling at each other. She repeatedly said she didn’t know what about.
When she got up to get a drink of juice she saw the couple sitting at the table still, Vallier said. She didn’t have a chance to get ice cubes in her cup before Bear and Ermine stood up and started hitting each other with what seemed to be closed fists.
Vallier said she backed up as the two got closer to her, and she watched Ermine grab an unknown object and swing it at Bear.
Vallier said she distinctly remembers Bears saying “as if you stabbed me” before pulling Ermine down and banging the back of her head on the floor for a few seconds.
“I think Evan stopped because he was getting weak,” Vallier said, her eyes puffy from crying.
Vallier immediately noticed blood squirting rhythmically from Bear’s neck, saying “there was blood everywhere.” She grabbed a towel to stem the blood as he laid down.
Ermine disappeared for a short time, Vallier said she believed to make a 911 call in the bathroom. When Ermine returned with the phone, Vallier started taking advice from the operator and doing chest compressions and CPR.
Vallier doesn’t recall what Ermine was doing that entire time but at some point “out of the corner of my eye I could see her and she started mopping up the blood.”
Ermine returned for a short time to sit beside them, saying “wake up Evan” but left out the side door before paramedics and police arrived, Vallier said.
Vallier didn’t leave Bear’s side until a female paramedic told her “that he was already gone,” she said.
When looking at police photos, Vallier said she didn’t recognize a bloody cloth in the kitchen as the one she’d used.
Earlier in the day, police video showed a bloody towel near the furnace in the home’s basement. That video also showed Bear’s body laying shirtless on the kitchen floor. Around him, the floor looked streaky with blood as though it had been wiped.
These images proved to be emotional for many of Bear’s family members who left the court loudly sobbing at different points, and a number of jurors turned their heads at the commotion.
Vallier returns to the stand for cross-examination on Wednesday morning. The jury trial could last up to 10 days, with two paramedics and up to five more police officers testifying.