Bridges takes to witness stand

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This article was published 06/04/2021 (1825 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A day that began with convicted murder Michael Bridges telling a Brandon courtroom he was experiencing “pure rage” when he killed 18-year-old Erin Chorney in 2002 ended with an emotional and tearful apology to the victim’s family members seated in the room.

Bridges himself took to the witness stand on the fifth day of his faint hope clause hearing in Brandon Court of Queen’s Bench. Bridges was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder in 2005, but is asking to be allowed to apply for parole early under a now-repealed section of the Criminal Code.

The approximately five-month-long relationship between the two started well and everything was “amazing,” Bridges testified.

But an argument on the day Bridges killed Chorney started after she said she wouldn’t drop assault charges she was pressing against him from a previous incident.

“When we started arguing about it I started to get mad … I was thinking just pure rage, just angry. I wanted to hurt her as bad as I could,” Bridges said under questioning from defence lawyer Carley Mahoney.

“It was just everything that had bottled up and at that moment it just all came up, everything that I was going through the last month, everything. It was just pure rage.”

Bridges wore a blue dress shirt, black pants, beard and glasses while sitting in the witness box to testify. He spoke in a soft voice and was asked several times to speak up.

The court heard earlier in the hearing Bridges choked Chorney before holding her head underwater in a bathtub for 20 minutes. After killing her, he buried her body in someone else’s grave and lied to police about the incident for approximately two years because he was scared of going to jail.

After killing Chorney, Bridges said he started dating another woman, from whom he also hid the murder.

He was eventually arrested after admitting to the killing to an undercover police officer.

Bridges detailed his upbringing on Monday morning, which he described as “hard.” He said his mom was a single parent at times and he had several stepfathers.

There was allegedly physical abuse at home from his older sister and one of his stepfathers beat his mother, he said. Bridges described him as a horrible person.

The family never talked about their feelings, he said, and as a teenager and young adult, he turned to alcohol to cope. Bridges drank every day and described himself as an alcoholic.

At the time of the murder, Bridges said he was trying to protect himself from going to jail and destroyed evidence to avoid being held accountable. He said he didn’t care about Chorney’s family in the moment.

He said, while choking back tears, Chorney was very special and someone he could love and count on — two things he lacked from his family growing up.

Justice John Menzies, the judge overseeing the faint hope clause hearing, sentenced Bridges to life in prison in 2005. He has so far served 17 years in Stony Mountain Institution.

Bridges said he remembered Menzies told him “You say you loved her, but you held her life in such little regard,” while sentencing him.

“At the time when I heard that, being the selfish person I was … the reason I remember it was because I was thinking to myself, ‘Who is he to tell me that I didn’t love her?” Bridges said.

“But after years of thinking about it, I didn’t know what love was, I didn’t love her, I couldn’t have loved her because if you love someone, you don’t hurt them, you don’t kill them.”

When Bridges first arrived in prison, he referred to Chorney as “my victim” in counselling sessions, he said. This changed during an autobiography exercise during the high-intensity family violence programming with facilitator Tara Verbling, which he said hit him like a “wrecking ball” and was when he started taking responsibility.

“It opened me up to be honest with myself and understanding how much pain and suffering I had caused. I couldn’t deny it anymore, I couldn’t brush it off,” he said.

Bridges enrolled in a number of different counselling programs and restorative justice sessions in his time in both the medium- and minimum-security units of the federal jail. He said the programs made him understand the perspective of the Chorney family and realize the harm he caused.

After Bridges read the court an apology letter he wrote during an exercise in prison, Mahoney asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say at the end of his testimony.

“I just want to tell her family how sorry I am, sorry that I robbed you of the chance of having Erin (Chorney) in your lives,” Bridges said through tears. He spoke with his head down but looked at Chorney’s family seated in the courtroom periodically.

“I saw how much she cared about you. She did not deserve to die. She was supposed to be here … to share her experiences with you.”

“You prayed for answers, you asked for help and you received none because I was too much of a coward to admit to what I did.”

Bridges apologized to both of Chorney’s parents and said he doesn’t deserve forgiveness for what he did.

Elizabeth Greer, the Manitoba representative for Prison Fellowship Canada, also testified for the defence earlier in the day. She described Bridges as a “god-fearing man” and said he did well in a restorative justice program she ran in Stony Mountain Institution.

The faint hope clause was repealed from the Criminal Code in December 2011, but Bridges can still apply under it as he was convicted before it was removed.

The clause, otherwise known as S.745.6 of the Canadian Criminal Code, was a statutory provision that allowed offenders sentenced to life imprisonment with a “parole eligibility period of greater than 15 years to apply for early parole once they have served 15 years.”

Bridges is scheduled to be cross-examined by the Crown attorneys Mark Lafreniere and Joel Myskiw today before they call witnesses. The jury trial is scheduled to run until Friday.

» dmay@brandonsun.com

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