'I was freaking out', Gurpreet Ronald testifies in the Gill murder trial

CTV Ottawa: Gill trial continues CTV’s Joanne Schnurr has the latest of what is happening in court at the Gill trial.

Accused murderer Gurpreet Ronald gave her version of the day Jagtar gill was bludgeoned and stabbed to death in her Barrhaven home January 14, 2014; testifying that she came across Jagtar’s lifeless body and “freaked out.”

In a relatively calm voice, Gurpreet Ronald walked the jury through the morning of the murder, the discovery of the body and her panicked actions that ensued.  In a police interview the day after Jagtar Gill's murder, Ronald said she had planned to pop by the gill house that morning but changed her mind and went to see her father at her sister’s house instead.

“You said initially you thought about popping over,” the police detective asks Ronald, in an interview room at police headquarters.

“I thought I was going to pop by in the day but knew someone coming,” Ronald replies.  It is January 30, one day after Jagtar’s murder. Today, court heard a different version from Ronald that she decided to stop by after visiting her sister’s house to say hello to Jagtar and grab a few tools she needed.  Gurpreet told a hushed courtroom that she knocked on the door. No one answered so she tried the knob and walked in calling out hello in Punjabi. Gurpreet says she walked through the house and saw Jagtar lying on the floor.

"I saw her neck cut off. It was wide open,” she told court.

"I was freaking out. I might have yelled and screamed. I thought I was going to faint.”

Ronald says she steadied herself on the carpet, putting her two feet and two hands on the floor, then felt something under her left foot and picked up a knife.

"I was nervous and scared,” she testified, “I kept staring at it and I wanted to walk away from it but realized I had touched the knife and there was blood on my hand."

She noticed a box of gloves and put a pair of them on to wipe the blood off the knife. As she was doing that she says she cut her ring finger and went upstairs in search of a bandaid.

Her lawyer Michael Smith says "this is a friend whose husband you're having an affair with. You don't call 911?"

Gurpreet Ronald answers "the knife has my blood on it.  I've got a cut on my hand. I'm the only one there so I only thought about me. To protect me"

Ronald says she then calls Bhupinderpal Gill, the co-accused in this case, twice in a panic, then goes to Sobey’s to ask him what the heck is going on at his house. After that, she drives aimlessly, wanting to get rid of the knife and gloves.  So, she tells court that she goes to an NCC property where she shoves the knife and gloves in the snow and leaves.

“You didn't share this info with anyone?” asks her lawyer.

“I just couldn't. I just didn't,” Gurpreet replies. She then tells the jury that she kept an appointment that afternoon with her interior decorator, admitting in court that she broke down a couple of times during that visit.