Witnesses describe fight that led to fatal stabbing

The brother of a man who was fatally stabbed in 2023 described the victim’s final words to him during a manslaughter trial in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench on Wednesday.

“He asked me to take care of his sons for him, and that was his last words to me,” Elijah Mentuck, 19, said through tears.

Talisa Brandon, 27, is standing trial for manslaughter and aggravated assault after she allegedly stabbed and killed Tristin Beaulieu, 23, in Waywayseecappo and stabbed another man during the same altercation.

Beaulieu’s partner was the first witness to take the stand on Tuesday.

Rosemary Baptiste, 30, said she spent the day preparing for a wiener roast at the house of her mother, who lived next door to her.

On the evening of July 5, 2023, Baptiste, Beaulieu and other family and friends were at the wiener roast, she testified. There were about 10 people there in total.

Baptiste testified that she invited Brandon over later in the evening, and when Brandon arrived with her young child, she was “already pretty drunk.”

Baptiste said a few more people joined as the night went on, but her mother eventually wanted to relax, so most of the group moved to Baptiste’s house, including several children.

Baptiste said she was checking in on the children when an argument broke out between her cousin, David Medicine, and Brandon and her partner at the time, Larry Jeremiah Ross.

She said it turned physical, and she saw Brandon and Ross hitting Medicine with a golf club and liquor bottle.

“Everybody was surrounding them, trying to grab stuff” from Brandon, she said, adding that Beaulieu was one of the people trying to grab the weapons.

Baptiste said she didn’t see how the argument became physical.

She and Beaulieu told Brandon and Ross they had to leave, and Ross began arguing with Beaulieu.

Ross and Beulieu began to physically fight inside the house, she testified. At some point they stopped fighting and Ross and Brandon left the house, she said, later adding that Beaulieu followed and the two men started to fight again.

She said Ross was on the ground with Beaulieu on top punching him. Brandon and Ross’s sister were trying to pull Beaulieu off Ross, she said.

“They were all piled on,” Baptiste said. “When I started to pull (Brandon) off of Tristin … she grabbed my hair.”

Baptiste said she and Brandon briefly fought.

She then went to her mother’s home to tell her that everybody was fighting.

“I remember that’s when my cousin David came inside. He said, ‘I’ve been stabbed.’”

Baptiste said she told Medicine to put pressure on his wound and went to look for Beaulieu. She started to panic when she couldn’t find him.

She went outside and saw someone on the road.

“I went closer and seen there was my late partner on the road … I started screaming,” Baptiste said. “I stayed beside him.”

Defence lawyer Jonathan Richert questioned Baptiste about how certain she was that Beaulieu, and possibly others, were trying to take the weapons away from Brandon and Ross and not involved in the initial fight.

“One hundred per cent they were trying to stop it,” she said.

Richert asked if she saw Medicine hitting Brandon and Ross back. Baptiste said she didn’t and that he was trying to cover himself.

He asked Baptiste whether she ever saw Beaulieu choke Ross to the point that he went unconscious. She said she never saw or heard anything about that.

Richert suggested Baptiste knew there were substances being used in the house, despite her denying that earlier in her testimony.

He suggested that she and others were doing cocaine in the bathroom when Beaulieu asked for some.

Richert suggested she told the others he didn’t need any, and when the group said they wouldn’t share, he got angry.

He suggested that an altercation happened, during which Medicine accidentally hit Brandon’s child while trying to hit someone else, and the rest of the fighting happened after that.

Baptiste disagreed.

Mentuck was next to take the stand.

He testified that he was in the kitchen when the “commotion” broke out in the living room. While he said he couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, he heard arguing.

He saw Brandon and Ross punching Medicine on the couch and hitting him with a golf club. Mentuck saw a fresh gash over Medicine’s eye.

Mentuck said Brandon’s child was in the kitchen with him and started crying at one point.

“I guess they started to think that someone hit their kid,” he said. “I guess the kid was getting scared or something.”

“Did you see anybody hit a child at that house?” Crown attorney Melania Cannon asked. Mentuck said he hadn’t and that the child wasn’t close to the “commotion.”

When the fight moved outside, he said, he saw Ross and Beaulieu wrestling and fighting, but no weapons were being used.

He said he saw Brandon go back inside the house and come back outside with a bread knife.

“I grabbed her arm and just snatched that knife and just threw it away somewhere. I told her not to use something like that,” he said.

Mentuck said he went to his aunt’s house, where the wiener roast was, and told her about the fight.

When he went back outside, someone told him, “They’re gone walking,” so he went running down the road, he said. He testified that he heard a man yelling.

“I seen like shadows and a bunch of fighting things,” he said, adding that Ross saw him and started chasing Mentuck before going back to Beaulieu and hitting him again.

He said Ross, Brandon and another person were also hitting and pulling Medicine’s hair.

“I heard my bro’ say ‘stop, I’m done, please.’ Same with David, but they didn’t.”

After a while, the group eventually left, and that’s when Mentuck spoke to Beaulieu for the last time and helped Medicine, who was bleeding profusely, get back to the house, he said.

During cross-examination, Richert questioned Mentuck on where he was in the house when the altercation initially started and his ability to see the final fight on the road.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com