Witness says Blacksmith had gun ‘trained’ on victim

A witness testified in court that he saw Jeremy Blacksmith pointing a sawed-off shotgun at a 21-year-old man moments after he was fatally shot in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.

The Crown witness — a 19-year-old man who can’t be named because he was a youth when the shooting occurred — testified on Monday in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench.

Blacksmith, 43, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Blaze Tacan, and two weapons offences.

The witness, who was 17 at the time, described the events that led up to the moment Tacan was shot on Aug. 5, 2023.

He said he was riding his dirt bike on the way to visit his grandmother when he heard a group of people sitting outside on Tacan’s mother’s deck swearing at him while giving him the middle finger.

“I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t say nothing … I was just trying to go by on my dirt bike,” the witness said.

He had a five-minute visit with his grandmother and then rode to Blacksmith’s house to tell him about what had just happened. Blacksmith was on his deck when the man parked his dirt bike and explained the incident, he said.

Then Tacan appeared on the road in front of Blacksmith’s house and accused the man of doing something to the people who were on the deck at his mother’s house when he drove by on his dirt bike, the man said.

“I didn’t like the way he was talking,” the man said, adding that Tacan was speaking in a mean and angry tone.

The man said Blacksmith walked off the deck, unzipped the witness’s gym bag and took out a sawed-off shotgun. He testified that he did not tell Blacksmith to take the gun out and that he didn’t know whether the gun was loaded.

Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup showed the witness a picture of the gun that police found near the scene, and he confirmed it was the gun in his gym bag.

The man said he was standing close to a firepit near a treeline when Blacksmith walked down a path toward Tacan.

“I thought he was trying to scare him off,” the man said, adding that he told Tacan to leave.

The witness said he was watching Tacan when the gun went off.

When he turned toward the accused, he said, Blacksmith was holding the gun near his chest with it “trained” on Tacan, who had just fallen backwards onto the road.

The man said he heard a single shot and said nobody else was holding a gun nearby.

He said Blacksmith ran toward Tacan and looked at his body before the witness told him to “get over here.”

As he and Blacksmith walked back to the house, he could hear two women screaming as they came toward Tacan, who remained on the ground, he said.

When they got inside, the witness put the gun in his gym bag, he said. He testified that Blacksmith told him, “We need to get rid of it. We need to hide it,” while Blacksmith packed a bag of his personal belongings.

Lonstrup showed the man an aerial map of the crime scene and he circled two areas where the witness tried to hide the shotgun, court heard.

Blacksmith told the witness the first hiding spot — under a pile of leaves — was “no good,” the man said.

The witness said he continued to run up a hill along a path toward his relative’s house. He wrapped the gun in a sweater he was wearing, which had shotgun shells in his pocket, and hid it under some leaves north of the house, he said.

The man wiped tears from his eyes as he described talking to Blacksmith about the seriousness of the incident in the yard before they were arrested and transported to the Virden RCMP detachment.

He pleaded guilty to three weapons charges on Jan. 16, 2025, and was sentenced to one year of supervised probation and a two-year weapons prohibition.

The court heard what happened in the days leading up to the fatal shooting.

He told Crown attorneys Lonstrup and Sarah Kok that Blacksmith had showed him messages from Tacan, who allegedly threatened the witness and the accused.

“I didn’t really get along with him and I really didn’t know him, like, growing up,” the man said.

He said he has been bullied, threatened and attacked in the community since 2019. He described an incident where someone in a group of people shot him in the leg with a BB gun at a powwow days before Tacan was killed.

The man said he was unsure whether Tacan was a part of the group involved in the shooting.

He said Blacksmith was angry when he told him about the incident at the powwow and gave him a sawed-off shotgun “for protection,” which the witness had in his possession a few days before the fatal shooting.

The man testified that he would carry the unloaded gun with him in a gym bag, but he never shot the gun.

During cross-examination, he testified that Tacan was reaching for his waistband before he was shot, adding that he was scared Tacan was going to shoot him or Blacksmith.

Defence lawyer Bob Harrison suggested that the man shot Tacan and that Blacksmith never told him to hide the gun.

The man insisted that neither of those suggestions were true.

The trial continues.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com