Woman testifies ex fatally shot man who threatened to 'slit his throat in his sleep'

Cara Hall couldn't bring herself to look in the direction of her ex-boyfriend in court, though she says he fired several shots at a man who later turned up dead in the snow in Winnipeg's North End.

"To my left," Hall told Crown prosecutor Minh Nguyen while weeping and staring down, referring to a shackled Christopher Brass sitting across the room.

Brass was charged with second-degree murder after Prysiazniuk-Settee was found fatally shot on Aberdeen Avenue at around 10 a.m. on Feb. 8, 2017. Police believe he was shot at a nearby home on Powers Avenue and he took off before being found in the snow blocks away.

Brass has pleaded not guilty. His case is being heard by a jury of five men and seven women, with Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench Justice Vic Toews presiding over the trial.

Hall, who was later charged as an accessory after the fact, testified at Day 2 of Brass's trial in a Winnipeg courtroom Tuesday. She said she has known Brass for 12 years and they dated between January and March 2017.

Hall says she is clean now and pursuing an education, but was using meth "continuously" back then — including the morning she says Brass fatally shot Prysiazniuk-Settee at the second-storey suite of a "drug house" on Powers where her friend lived.

Hall said she visited the home and did meth with her friend at about 5 a.m. A short time later, Prysiazniuk-Settee arrived to buy drugs off her friend, court heard.

That friend met Prysiazniuk-Settee at the doorway, but he made his way inside when he saw Hall, she said.

'Pile of drugs and money'

"I was sitting at the table with a pile of drugs and money," said Hall, who recalls being paranoid that Prysiazniuk-Settee might rob her.

That's when he noticed Brass and her friend's boyfriend asleep on furniture in the room, she said.

"He said, 'There's that mother f--ker right there, I should slit his throat in his sleep," Hall told court, adding Prysiazniuk-Settee seemed to be drunk and was yelling at a sleeping Brass as soon as he got inside.

Hall said she nudged Brass awake, but he was incoherent. She remembers Prysiazniuk-Settee saying "get up" and "remember me mother f--ker, what's up?" 

"I said to him, 'Listen to this kid, do you know him?'" Hall said.

Hall said her friend tried to intervene, but Brass eventually reached for a small gun from his lower leg. She heard more than one shot fired from Brass's gun, Hall said.

Prysiazniuk-Settee then took off out of the house, Hall says, and there were bullet holes in the inside door of the home. Brass left too, she added.

'Didn't think that the boy was hit' 

A short time later Hall, her friend and her friend's boyfriend called a cab and picked up Brass from a convenience store on Salter Street and Alfred Avenue. They got dropped off at the Marlborough Hotel and played slots, she said.

"As ignorant as it sounds we didn't think that the boy was hit," Hall said, adding she later got a call from police confirming Prysiazniuk-Settee was dead.

Defence attorney Tara Walker suggested it's common for people involved in the drug game to carry weapons due to the  threat of getting ripped off, and that extends to those buying or selling from a drug house like the one described by Hall. Hall agreed.

That's another reason why the house was rigged with a surveillance system that could be viewed through a television, Hall said.

Hall said she didn't see any weapons on Prysiazniuk-Settee, but said the situation was tense. She feared violence was about to erupt between Prysiazniuk-Settee and Brass, Hall told court, so she grabbed her money and drugs right before the gun shots rang out.

Though she couldn't bring herself to look at Brass when pressed by Crown attorneys, as her testimony wrapped up Hall stared back in Brass's direction right before exiting the court Tuesday afternoon.

Detective ID's Brass

In the morning, Winnipeg police Det. Parampreet Sahota identified four people on surveillance footage from the Salter convenience store, a cab and the Marlborough hotel, all recorded after the shooting on Feb. 8, 2017.

He pointed to photos and video of a man he identified as Brass inside the convenience store, shortly after 9:40 a.m. that morning.

Sahota then walked jurors through footage taken from a cab outside he says Brass got into, joining Hall, her friend and her friend's boyfriend.

Duffy's Taxi driver Iqbal Dhaliwal testified he picked up a man and two females at a home on Powers at about 9:45 a.m. before continuing to the Salter convenience store and picking up another man. He dropped them off at the Marlborough Hotel just after 10 a.m., he said.

Sahota also showed video of the group getting out of the cab and entering the Marlborough Hotel.

Hall later looked at the same footage and confirmed she, Brass and the others were the people in each of the three videos.

The trial is set to resume Wednesday.

With files from Jillian Taylor