Bradford man accused of stabbing Good Samaritan 20 times takes witness stand

The Bradford, Ont. man accused of second-degree murder of a Good Samaritan and the assault of his teenage girlfriend took the witness stand in his defence.

The Bradford, Ont. man accused of second-degree murder of a Good Samaritan and the assault of his teenage girlfriend took the witness stand Thursday in his defence.

Brandon Aaron, 23, told the court he “feared for his life” and stabbed David Goddard, 59, in the early morning hours of September 4, 2022, along Holland Street West in Bradford, when the stranger came up to him and punched and choked him.

During examination-in-chief by his lawyer Eugene Bhattacharya, Aaron told the court he was afraid when the older and heavier man approached him in an aggressive manner. Aaron said Goddard began choking him, and when he could feel his eyes closing, he stabbed the man.

“I thought I was going to die. I felt like I had to,” he testified.

Aaron told the court he was initially punched and knocked to the ground by Goddard, who straddled him, which resulted in his gold chains leaving marks on his neck before they were ripped apart.

“I just got scared,” said Aaron. “I knew I had my knife. I stabbed him,” Aaron explained to the court.

Aaron described swinging his knife as hard as he could to break free from the man he said attacked him. He said as Goddard’s grip on his throat loosened he slipped out from under the stranger, before stabbing Goddard again in the back. He could not remember how many times he stabbed Goddard.

“I was in shock,” Aaron said.

Aaron, who testified he could not see whether Goddard was bleeding because it was dark out, described seeing blood on his hands before heading home. He told his mother “something happened” and he’d been attacked.

The court has heard Goddard, whom police described as a Good Samaritan, came to the aid of Aaron’s then 17-year-old girlfriend that night when she told police he must have heard her screams. She was later taken to hospital for a broken forearm after seeking help at a nearby apartment building.

“I was screaming because of the pain that I was in, that’s when the guy heard me and came over,” she told a South Simcoe Police detective about nine hours after the stabbing.

Goddard, she told police, offered help after an enraged Aaron beat her with a flashlight she’d borrowed from a nearby gas station to find her missing cell phone that she believed Aaron dropped that night. She told police Aaron pushed and struck her repeatedly and threatened to kill her when he pulled a knife from his side bag.

“He took the flashlight from me and started hitting me with it and then he held a knife to my throat, and he was like ‘If killed you right now and left you nobody would find you,’” she said in the final of three police interviews that day.

Aaron testified he never hit his girlfriend that night and did not hold a knife to her throat.

On the witness stand, Aaron’s former girlfriend, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, changed her story dramatically. She testified she didn’t tell police the truth when she spoke with detectives and felt “ambushed.”

The defence conceded Aaron sent the young woman a series of Instagram messages between three and five hours after the stabbing, telling her what happened. The Crown suggested Aaron was telling his beaten girlfriend what to tell police. About 10 days later, the young woman returned to police to retract her previous statements to investigators.

“I’m going to be gone for a very long time,” read one of the messages from Aaron. “im telling them it was self defense. that u were drunk and kept falling so i was kinda carrying you bc you couldn’t walk.”

“Can u please just save me ur all I got,” he asked.

The messages were discovered by the young woman’s mother after her daughter borrowed her phone later that day.

Aaron testified his ‘mind was not right’ when he was sending the messages and disagreed with the Crown’s suggestion that he was trying to tell his girlfriend what to tell police happened the night Goddard died.

The trial continues Friday with closing arguments expected to begin Wednesday of next week.