Stabbing described as ‘tragic accident’

A woman accused of fatally stabbing a man in 2023 testified that she was scared the victim was going to kill her then-partner during a melee leading up to the victim’s death.

Talisa Brandon, 27, is on trial in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench for manslaughter and aggravated assault after she allegedly killed Tristin Beaulieu, 23, and injured another man in the same fight.

In an opening statement before calling Brandon to the stand, defence lawyer Jonathan Richert said the “tragic accident” that took place in Waywayseecappo has become a “nightmare” for multiple people, including the families of the victim and the accused.

He said he described it as an accident because there are no allegations that anyone intended the “outcome that occurred.”

“Miss Brandon is choosing to testify because she wishes to tell her story,” he said. “She wishes for the court to hear how everything unfolded in her eyes … and how and why she was in such fear for the lives and safety of herself, her partner, her sister-in-law and two infant children that fateful evening.”

In Brandon’s testimony, she said everything was going OK on July 5, 2023, when she went to Rosemary Baptiste’s house for a get-together with a group of roughly 10 people.

She said the mood changed when David Medicine sat on the couch with Brandon and her then-partner Larry Jeremiah Ross, with her child nearby.

After a brief argument with Medicine, Brandon asked Ross if they should leave, and he agreed to go once he finished his beer, she said.

However, Ross’s sister, Jasmine, came over, and the two siblings signalled to Brandon that they were going to the bathroom to do a line of cocaine, she testified.

Brandon said she joined, and Baptiste, the homeowner, did as well shortly after. Beaulieu knocked on the door, and when Brandon let him in, he wanted some of the cocaine, Brandon said.

They initially cut him a line of cocaine, but Brandon consumed it instead since Beaulieu was being “rude” and “demanding.”

Brandon left the bathroom to grab her child and gave the child to Jasmine. While Jasmine was holding the child, Medicine tried to hit her, but Jasmine moved and Medicine hit the child in the face instead, she said.

Jasmine started hitting Medicine with a golf club and Brandon started “hitting and slapping him,” she said.

Once the fight ended, the accused found Beaulieu holding Ross against a wall in a bedroom.

Richert asked Brandon about her height and weight. She said she weighed about 120 pounds at the time and is roughly five-foot-five.

“How big would you describe Tristin?” Richert asked.

“I’ll just put it this way. I’ve never come across a guy who was that tall and that big,” she said, later adding that Beaulieu was taller and heavier than Ross.

The fight eventually broke up, and Brandon pushed Ross outside of the house so they could leave, but Beaulieu and Medicine followed them out, she testified.

“I wanted to go home,” she said.

She grabbed her child, and when she came back outside, Brandon said she saw Beaulieu and Ross fighting again.

Brandon said Beaulieu got Ross to the ground and was choking him.

“Jasmine was … punching (Beaulieu), and she was doing everything she could,” Brandon said, adding that Beaulieu “shook” Jasmine off.

Brandon said she tried to intervene as well, but couldn’t stop Beaulieu. She said Beaulieu said he was going to kill Ross.

Brandon went inside the house to look for something to hit Beaulieu with but couldn’t find anything, so she grabbed a knife, she said. When she started walking toward Beaulieu, someone grabbed the knife from her and pinned her arms behind her back, she said.

Richert asked what Brandon was worried about happening.

“I was worried Tristin was gonna kill (Ross),” she said.

While her arms were pinned, she described seeing Ross go “limp” and unconscious while Beaulieu was choking him. She said Beaulieu stood up and said, “I killed him.”

She thought Ross was dead, but he eventually woke up, she said. When he did, Brandon said she, her child, Ross, his sister and her child started walking home.

Brandon said the men started following them, and she saw Beaulieu holding something.

When they started to catch up, she told Jasmine to go home with the kids, and Brandon went to another nearby house to get help, Brandon said.

She said she couldn’t find anybody inside, so she looked for something she could hit the men with. She said she couldn’t find anything and grabbed two knives.

She ran back to the road and saw Beaulieu trying to hit Ross with a machete and Ross holding a rake, Brandon said. She said she also saw Jasmine, who hadn’t gone home, and Medicine arguing.

Brandon said she yelled for Beaulieu to stop and “warned him” that if he didn’t, she would stab him.

“He didn’t stop. He looked at me, he heard what I said … he kept fighting,” she said.

She said that’s when she stabbed Beaulieu, aiming for his left shoulder area. She said she never meant to kill him.

When he still didn’t stop swinging the machete, she stabbed him again, she said.

Brandon said she then saw Medicine push Jasmine, who was holding Brandon’s child, so she put herself between them and warned Medicine she would stab him if he did it again.

Medicine then used a golf club to hit Brandon in the head, she said.

“I kind of … brushed it off and stabbed him,” she said.

Richert said members of the Manitoba First Nation Police Service were drawn to Brandon’s house after hearing a woman scream and asked if that was her. She said it was.

Brandon said she heard Beaulieu’s partner screaming for him, and when she checked her Facebook, she saw she had put crying emojis beside Beaulieu’s name. She assumed that it was because he had died.

“Why did that make you scream?” Richert asked.

“Because I killed somebody,” Brandon said through tears. “I had just met his kids. I had just met him … I didn’t want that to happen to my own kid’s dad, so to find out that that was somebody else’s dad, somebody else’s son.”

In cross-examination, Crown attorney Melania Cannon pointed out discrepancies between Brandon’s testimony and other witnesses’ testimonies, along with her statement to police.

Cannon questioned Brandon about why she told police she saw Medicine and Beaulieu with machetes before going to grab the two knives, but testified that she didn’t know what the men were holding before grabbing the knives.

She also pointed out that Brandon never told police Beaulieu said, “I killed him,” after choking Ross.

“You agree with me that Tristin saying he killed him would be a pretty important thing to remember, right?” Cannon asked.

Brandon agreed, but in response to other questions regarding her statement to police, she said she wasn’t able to say since she was still in shock and only spoke with police for about an hour.

“I’m suggesting that you’re remembering it that way now, because you’re thinking of it in terms of your memory,” Cannon said. “I’m going to suggest … that you remember him saying, ‘I killed him,’ because that’s what you were thinking.”

The trial continues.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com