Woman describes the night northern Ont. murder witness arrived looking for help

A murder trial in Sudbury heard testimony this week of the events immediately after Brandan Brooks was fatally shot on M'Chigeeng First Nation. ((Darren MacDonald/CTV News))

A murder trial in Sudbury heard testimony this week of the events immediately after Brandan Brooks was fatally shot on M’Chigeeng First Nation.

Crown prosecutors are trying to prove that Prince Graham directed five men to drive from Brampton, Ont., to Manitoulin Island and murder Brooks, who was killed early in the morning of April 5, 2022.

They allege Graham is a drug dealer who was trying to assert control over the First Nation as his exclusive turf. They said Brooks was a rival dealer who was killed in an attempt to eliminate the competition.

After pistol-whipping and beating him, members of the five-member crew shot Brooks and left him to die, assistant Crown attorney Cecilia Bouzane told the jury Thursday morning.

The only other person in the residence that night was Jane Migwans, who owned the Pine Street home where Brooks was killed.

Despite being ordered by the men not to leave, Migwans ran to a neighbour’s house as soon as the men fled, just after 1 a.m. to call 911.

The neighbour, Ellen Corbiere, testified that on the night of April 5, 2022, she heard a vehicle outside her window around 1 a.m. quickly pull up and then leave a short time later.

“I was trying to sleep on the couch,” Corbiere replied when questioned by assistant Crown attorney Matthew Geigen-Miller.

Then she heard a knock on her door. She said she knew right away something was wrong.

“There’s a certain kind of knock you get when there’s bad news,” Corbiere testified.

“I can’t describe it.”

She said Migwans was her distant cousin, someone she had known since Migwans was a baby.

“Our family was related to her dad,” Corbiere said.

She knew Migwans struggled with drug addiction. Corbiere said that Migwans' house, along with another in the area, were known as drug houses, where people came and went to buy drugs.

But in the months before April 5, Migwans had lost her boyfriend to a drug overdose.

“It took a toll on Jane,” Corbiere said.

Her boyfriend’s death sent Migwans to drug rehab, which she had completed. She returned home from rehab in the middle of March, just weeks before the murder.

She told Corbiere that she was trying hard to remain sober and had met someone in rehab.

But around 1 a.m. on April 5, 2022, Migwans arrived at her door. Corbiere’s nephew, Dexter, let her in, and Migwans asked to use someone’s phone to call 911.

“I think she was frantic,” Corbiere testified.

“I’d call the knock frantic.”

Migwans told her something like, “her boyfriend got shot.”

Police and an ambulance were called, and Corbiere’s nephew returned to the residence with Migwans. Corbiere got in her car to look for the police, who arrived a short time later.

The first witness Thursday was primary care paramedic Matthew Mahoney.

Mahoney testified that they received the call around 1:23 a.m. and were told that a 30-year-old man had a gunshot wound to his abdomen.

He and his partner arrived at the Pine Street home and entered the back bedroom, where he saw a man lying on the floor on his right side. Police were already there.

Mahoney said the patient was not wearing a shirt and had a small hole in his abdomen.

“He was partially conscious,” he testified.

“He was still making noise but couldn’t talk.”

As soon as he was loaded into the ambulance, however, the shooting victim became “vital signs absent,” Mahoney said.

“No longer breathing, no heartbeat,” he said in explaining what that meant.

A police officer offered to drive the ambulance so both paramedics could focus on the patient.

But efforts to revive him failed and he was declared dead on arrival in hospital.

Testimony in the trial continued Friday. The case is scheduled to take about six weeks.