A Yellowknife jury has been left to decide whether or not a 56-year-old woman accused of stabbing her ex-partner in the leg was acting in self-defence.
Yellowknifer is choosing not to name the accused in order to protect the identity of her alleged victim.
The woman faces one count of aggravated assault. On Dec. 3 2016, the accused stabbed her ex-partner, leaving him lying unconscious in a pool of blood.
On Thursday, the accused’s lawyer Scott Cowan said the defence doesn’t contest the fact that the accused inflicted the stab wound. With that said, prosecutor Jay Bran told jurors the only question left to ask was: Did she act in self-defence?
Prosecutor Jay Potter argued that she did not.
Potter said the alleged victim was sitting on a couch when he was stabbed and argued the accused did not have a reasonable belief there was a threat against her. The accused, Potter said, acted out of “anger, frustration and suspicion.”
He said the woman thought she’d seen her ex-partner touching another man who was asleep in the accused’s Crestview Apartment unit. The woman thought he was either going through the man's pockets or touching him sexually, said potter. This prompted her violent response.
Potter pointed jurors to a statement the woman gave to police in which she can be heard telling officers she “lost it,” and stabbed him.
Potter said she attacked the man “to send a message,” not to protect herself, when evidence showed there was only a verbal argument before the stabbing occurred.
In his closing statements Cowan highlighted the “dark” domestic relationship his client had been in. He told jurors the man had assaulted the accused in the past, and that recent voice messages left by him “showed his true colours,” as an angry and violent man.
Cowan said the man has nine prior convictions for assault and violence and that his client received threatening messages, telling her to “watch out” when she was in Yellowknife.
The jury was still deliberating at press time.