Andre Wareham said he tried to walk away from a physical altercation that ended in the death of Bill Atkins.
Thursday afternoon the jury of a second-degree murder trial saw a video of a police interview with Wareham from Jan. 15, 2009 after he had been charged in connection with the death of Atkins.
The incident took place at a Finlayson Street apartment building on Jan. 14, 2009.
“I was attacked. I was pulled down, attacked. I was trying to defend myself,” Wareham told his brother Skye over the phone during the recorded interview.
“Everything just happened so fast,” he added. “I tried to walk away from this.”
Before hanging up, Wareham asked his brother to let their mom know he was OK and everything was going to be alright.
During the interview, conducted by Thunder Bay Police Service’s Sgt. Bill Boote, Wareham told the officer about how we was just getting his life together. He had a job at a local bakery and had stopped drinking and smoking cigarettes and marijuana.
He was able to support himself and was making plans for the future, plans that included moving from Thunder Bay to Timmins to stay with his grandfather.
He said on Jan. 14, 2009 he was walking up the stairs in his apartment building and saw his neighbour Joan McDonnell.
Then he saw Atkins.
“Billy grabbed me and asked me for drugs,” he said.
Wareham said he tried to go up the stairs but Atkins pulled him down the stairs and attacked him.
“He was kneeing me in the face…he just went nuts,” Wareham said.
Wareham said he’d moved to Thunder Bay in May 2008 with his then-girlfriend.
After they broke up, he was on welfare for a while and relied on food banks and the Shelter House for a few months.
Then he got a job at the bakery and moved into the apartment building on Finlayson Street.
“I wanted to change my life,” said Wareham, adding he left behind a lifestyle that included drugs in Toronto.
Wareham told Boote about encountering racism in Thunder Bay and how it scared him. He said he was called racist slurs by people living in his apartment building, including Atkins.
He continued that Atkins was always looking to fight and he would drink heavily.
“I saw this killer instinct in him,” he told the officer.
The jury also heard details of Wareham’s arrest and the care he received from paramedics and emergency room staff Thursday morning during the fourth day of the murder trial.
The court heard testimony from Thunder Bay Police Service’s Const. Pamela Cache, who was first on scene.
She said the accused was standing by a pay phone on the outside of Sasi Spring Water on Simpson Street.
Once he noticed the police car, his hands went up.
Const. Perry Paisley testified he arrived just after Cache and said he saw Wareham drop the phone and put his hands up.
The court had heard on Tuesday that Wareham had made his way to the payphone and called 911, stating he had gotten into a fight with Atkins and was defending himself.
He also told the 911 operator he had the knife on him.
Paisley said based on the information from the dispatch and for concern for officer safety, he had grounds to arrest Wareham for assault with a weapon.
After arriving on the scene, Paisley asked where the knife was and Wareham pointed to it on the ground about five feet away from him.
While the accused was being handcuffed, both Cache and Paisley heard Wareham say, “He kept bugging me. I was just defending myself.”
The officers noticed a large laceration on Wareham’s left thigh and called for an ambulance.
Both Cache and Paisley said Wareham was co-operative and coherent at the time.
An EMS unit arrived and paramedic Dawn Nitz attended to Wareham.
She noticed a large laceration on his left thigh and dressed the wound. She also noticed a small laceration on his right index finger.
Wareham’s heart rate was fast and his blood pressure was high. His breathing was also a little fast.
Nitz said Wareham was co-operative, understood everything they were asking of him and had no complaints of any other injuries.
Wareham told Nitz he had been in an altercation with a person who lived in the same building as him, but did not state how he got the lacerations.
She didn’t find any other injuries on the accused.
During cross-examination by defense lawyer Steven Hinkson, Nitz testified that paramedics ask their patients if they have any other injuries or pain and that if they have an injury you can’t see, you won’t know unless they tell you.
The jury also heard from emergency room nurse Jody Prunka, who testified she conducted the initial assessment on Wareham when he arrived at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences on Jan. 14, 2009.
She said he was alert and oriented and noticed no lacerations or contusions on Wareham except for on his left leg.
Hinkson said there was no reference to the laceration on Wareham’s right index finger in the emergency report.
Prunka said it is possible she missed the cut on the finger.
