‘It looked like a movie’: Witnesses recount fight involving Misha Pavelick on the night he was killed

Testimony wraps up in the first week of trial for the man accused of killing 19-year-old Misha Pavelick. Donovan Maess reports.

The first week of the trial for the man accused of killing Misha Pavelick nearly two decades ago has come to a close at the Court of King’s Bench in Regina.

Pavelick was fatally stabbed during a graduation party near Last Mountain Lake over the May long weekend in 2006.

The accused cannot be identified in keeping with the protections of Youth Criminal Justice Act, since he was 17 years old at the time of Pavelick’s death. He is charged with second-degree murder in connection with the incident.

Derek Enns, who was 18 years old and attending Miller High School at the time, said he was an acquaintance of Pavelick. Enns was camping with his then-girlfriend at the campground where Pavelick was stabbed the weekend of the party.

Now 19 years later, he took the stand as a Crown witness recounting the night of May 21, 2006.

“Misha and [his former girlfriend] were talking,” Enns told the court. “People surrounded both of them and started screaming at each other. Then she left and after that, [Misha] tried to run also.”

Enns, along with multiple previous witnesses in this case, testified Pavelick and his former girlfriend were dating off and on before the party.

The witness went on to say that the group of men chased after Pavelick, when a second altercation ensued. Enns added he did not know any of the people that were a part of the group.

“It was three or four on one,” Enns said. “I just watched [Misha] get pushed around and beat up. That’s when I decided to go get some friends like, ‘Let’s go and help him.’”

“I went in there to help defend him,” he added.

In an attempt to be a good Samaritan and break up the fight, Enns said Pavelick’s attackers turned on him.

He was thrown to his back and assaulted, but Enns could not tell by who.

“I threw one guy off [of Misha],” Enns testified. “I wanted to avoid the situation, but he chased me down. I got attacked by him and several others.”

“And I was stabbed. Multiple times,” he added. “It felt like forever. He had all his weight on my chest, but it happened quicky.”

After he was stabbed, Enns recalled sitting by the fire to collect himself.

“A lady across the fire said, ‘Derek, you’re bleeding,’” he recounted. “I lifted up my shirt and blood was oozing out.”

Enns said he immediately left the party and was taken by a friend to the hospital, where he discovered the extent of his injuries.

He was stabbed in both butt cheeks, the shoulder, the back of his left leg, and diaphragm. The wound to his abdomen forced him into surgery and he spent nearly a week in hospital recovering.

Cross Examination

In cross examination, defense lawyer Andrew Hitchcock challenged Enns’ memory of the night.

“Would you recall, as a general proposition, your memory would probably be strong closer to the events you’re talking about?” Hitchcock asked Enns.

“Yes,” Enns responded.

Hitchcock then pointed to previous testimony and police statements Enns gave in relation to this incident, which varied slightly from what he said in court Friday.

“[The Prosecution] asked if you had been drinking that day, you said, ‘You just opened a beer, you hadn’t had it,” he questioned.

“I hadn’t had any alcohol,” Enns said.

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According to evidence presented in court of previous hearing and statements to police, Enns said he may have drank more than he believed.

“I would suggest you actually had about three beers in an hour and were on your fourth one,” Hitchcock said.

The evidence also suggested Enns had been smoking marijuana.

The defense played a clip in court from an RCMP interrogation of Enns from 2006.

“We all say, ‘we should help him,” Enns said in the recording. “[My friends] grab some wood or whatever, chunks of two-by-four and they’re all standing together looking like they’re ready.”

“If that’s what I said then, then that is what I saw,” Enns said after the recording played. “That was 19 years ago.”

Other witnesses

Two more witnesses testified Friday as the first week of the trial came to an end.

The accused’s cousin, who is not being named in attempt to better keep the accused identity’s unknown under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, took the stand.

The cousin told the court he went to the party at the campground with the accused with two carloads of friends. When they arrived, they were told they were not allowed in, as they were not invited to the party.

In his testimony, he said he had a pleasant chat with a guard at the gate of the campground and eventually entered the party.

He also described an altercation that took place before he and his friends left the party.

“It looked like a movie,” the cousin told the court. “Everybody was fighting.”

“Did you stab anybody?” Crown Prosecutor Adam Brecker asked.

“No,” the witness said.

“Did you have a knife?” Brecker followed up.

“No,” he responded.

“Did anyone try to give you a knife?”

“Not that I could remember, no,” he said.

The cousin then went on to say one of the men he was with ended up with a stab wound – which he found out about after the group left the party at the campground.

In cross examination, the defense claimed the cousin had previously admitted to taking the blame for Pavelick’s death.

“I was going through a lot of interrogations,” the cousin said.

“Is it possible you killed Misha and just don’t remember?” Hitchcock asked.

“I don’t remember stabbing anybody,” the cousin responded. “I only use my fists when I fight.”

To end the day, Raymond McKay – who was 20 years old at the time of the incident – gave his version of events.

McKay, a recent Miller High School grad in 2006, said it was about 20 minutes from the beginning of the altercation to when things calmed down.

“[Misha] looked very pale,” he said. “His voice was scratchy or very soft. I thought I saw a stab wound.”

Friday’s testimony concludes the first week of a trial which is expected for four weeks.

Testimony continues Monday morning.