Five teenagers. Alcohol. A fight. A black-handled kitchen knife.
A young man with multiple stab wounds; a half-naked young woman running outside, screaming.
Someone obviously knows what went on at a Rotary Drive home in the early morning hours of Aug. 5, 2017, but no one who was there seems to remember.
Police were called to the home in the west end of St. John’s shortly before 5 a.m. RNC Const. Colin Shaw and his partner were the first to arrive, greeted in the driveway by tenants of the house’s upstairs apartment. There had been some kind of a fight in the downstairs apartment, according to what they had heard, and there was mention of a knife. A young woman had been thrown out of the apartment partially nude and had run upstairs screaming, with her pants in her hand, the tenants told Shaw.
Approaching the downstairs apartment, Shaw saw that the door was dented, as if it had been kicked in. Inside, the place was a mess, with clothes, garbage and empty beer bottles strewn about; a lamp was on the floor with its bulb still on. There was a smear of blood on the wall.
Shaw spoke to two men in the apartment, including Bradley Follett, whom the officer noticed was bleeding from a deep cut under his chin, a slash on his back and a serious-looking stab wound to his chest. The other man was adamant he go to the hospital.
Shaw testified Follett told him, “I’m best kind, I just need a beer.”
Shaw concluded Follett was heavily drunk. The officer later told the court, “If I had those injuries, I’d be howling in pain.”
Another RNC officer, Const. Jamie Cleary, expressed concern for Follett’s safety, particularly regarding the chest wound.
“I said, ‘You need treatment. You might die,’” Cleary told a provincial court judge this week.
Follett was taken to hospital by ambulance and refused to give a written statement to police about what happened, saying multiple people had assaulted him, but he didn’t know who they were.
Testifying before Judge Lori Marshall Tuesday, Follett said the same thing: he had been attacked that morning in August, but couldn’t remember who had done it.
Police allege it was Devon Joy, 19, and Dylan Walsh, 20, and charged each of them with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.
Both men had pleaded not guilty, but after their trial began on Monday, Walsh, who is in custody, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of assault. His case will be dealt with at a later date, but in the meantime, Joy’s trial continued.
A number of police officers took the stand on Monday, entering as evidence photos from the scene as well as of Follett’s gruesome stab wounds, taken in the hospital. Wounds on his chest and his neck, under his chin, were gaping.
A 17-year-old girl told the court she had arrived at the Rotary Drive apartment that night with her friend, who was Follett’s girlfriend, and Follett. Walsh, Joy and Joy’s brother were already there. The girl said she had met Joy and his brother earlier that summer through social media, and the group would hang out and drink often. That night some of them had bought a 26er of rum to share, she said, and she was drinking it straight from the bottle.
The girl, who can’t be named because of her age, said Follett drove her friend home when she started feeling sick, and later returned. At that point, there were five of them in the apartment, she confirmed, pointing to a diagram she had drawn for police indicating where everyone had been positioned in the room.
“I remember sitting on the couch and all of a sudden a big fight broke out,” she testified. “I don’t remember how I got out of the house, but I ran upstairs.”
Under questioning by Crown prosecutor Jeff Summers, the girl said she thought Joy and Walsh had been kicking Follett.
“I know he got stabbed. I just don’t know who did it,” she said.
“Did you see a knife?” Summers asked.
“Uh, yeah,” the girl replied, hesitantly.
“Did you see anyone holding a knife?” Summers asked.
“No,” the girl answered. “I just remember there was a racket. I didn’t see anything because I jumped up. I think I ran out of the house. I ran outside because I was scared.”
The girl said she couldn’t recall what she was wearing at the time. The upstairs tenants invited her inside, she said.
She acknowledged speaking to police, but told Summers she couldn’t recall giving a written statement.
The case will resume in provincial court on Thursday.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury