The wife of a man shot and killed at her side in their pickup on a rural road near Eckville in 2022 said the gunman appeared suddenly out of the darkness.
Leanne Low testified in Red Deer Court of King's Bench on Tuesday that she and her husband had just turned onto a lease road when shots rang out around 4 a.m. on June 20, 2022.
"I seen the man right there pop out of the corner of the ditch fire shots and shoot my husband in the head," she said, looking at Dustin Lemay-Storms, who was sitting in the prisoner's dock.
Lemay-Storms is on trial for second-degree murder for fatally shooting Stephen Pond, 46, on a rural property about three kilometres south of Eckville.
Crown prosecutor Ann Siford asked what the shooter looked like.
"He looked like him," said Low, again looking at Lemay-Storms.
Low testified that she and her husband left their Blackfalds home around midnight to drive around and to discuss arguments they had been having. They made a number of stops, at gas stations and at an abandoned house, before arriving in the early hours at an oilfield lease site.
Pond, who the court heard supported his wife and their three children by stealing and selling copper wire from abandoned lease sites, was tinkering with equipment at the site.
"I remember hearing a bunch of pow, pow, pow sounds," she said.
Her husband returned to the truck and told her 'I'm pretty sure we're being shot at.' "So, we ripped out of there."
The pair then drove in a big loop before returning to the same area in a different direction around 45 minutes later. Pond had said he had forgotten a strap at the lease site from the earlier visit.
When they returned, the shooter was only five feet away from the driver's side of the truck when shots were fired. Pond slammed the truck into reverse and it came to a stop near some spruce trees.
She saw immediately he was badly wounded. "I knew he was shot. He had a bullet right here," she said, touching the middle of her forehead with her finger.
The gunman then started walking toward her from about 30 feet away. He raised his rifle at her a couple of times and appeared to be fiddling with it when he swore a number of times before running off.
"I was in a state of shock. I stood there as he kept walking toward me. To try to shoot me."
Low used a cellphone to call 911, who kept her on the line until police arrived around 30 minutes later. While she was around the driver's side of the truck looking for their cellphones, she saw the light from the shooter's headlamp moving away into the bushes.
Pond died as he was being taken by STARS to an Edmonton hospital. Five bullet holes were later found in the front driver's side of the pickup.
During cross examination, defence lawyer Cody Ackland walked Low through comments she made to the 911 operator, the first police officer who arrived and in additional statements to the police later that day and two days later.
Ackland asked Low why she told the 911 operator she didn't know where the shooter went.
Low said she had an idea where he had gone but could not describe it on the phone.
During her first interview with police, a few minutes after the shooting she said she could not see the shooter because of the light from the head lamp other than to see he was wearing black. She also did not mention the first close encounter with the shooter, when he was only a few feet away.
Low said she had been focused on her husband, who was bleeding and would repeatedly stop breathing.
"I was in a complete state of shock when I was talking to that officer."
Earlier in the day, the court heard from a friend of Lemay-Storms, who testified that he had confessed he was the shooter.
In November 2022, the female friend went to see Dustin Lemay-Storms and his girlfriend at their home in a Red Deer trailer park, where they were in the midst of a big fight with both threatening suicide.
Lemay-Storms had barricaded himself in a bedroom, screwing the door shut, and a huge number of pills had been laid out in the bathroom that the girlfriend apparently planned to use in a suicide attempt, the friend testified.
The friend testified that she tried to talk the distraught couple down and told Lemay-Storms that he couldn't end it all because people cared about him. He only seemed to get more upset.
"He made it sound like it didn't matter, he was going to hell anyway," said the friend. Her identity is protected under a publication ban ordered by Justice Wayne Renke.
Then he told her that he had done it.
"I asked him after he said he did it, 'did he mean the shooting?' He just nodded."
The friend told RCMP about the incident when she went to Red Deer detachment in January 2023 to drop off a rifle that Lemay-Storms asked her to keep in her safe two to three weeks after the shooting. She had become concerned that the rifle might be connected to the shooting and did not want it at her place, she told the court.
