Maxi store stabbing witness recounts hearing 20-year-old clerk draw her last breath

A jury in the first-degree murder trial of Randy Tshilumba has heard graphic testimony from a witness who was shopping for groceries the night that 20-year-old Clémence Beaulieu-Patry was stabbed while working.

Tshilumba is accused of stabbing and killing Beaulieu-Patry at a Maxi grocery store on Papineau Avenue near Crémazie Boulevard in the Saint-Michel neighbourhood on the night of April 10, 2016.

The prosecution delivered its opening statement and called its first witnesses on Friday. One of them was a woman who had been shopping at the grocery store the evening that Beaulieu-Patry died.

Pascale Nadège Joseph said at first she saw what she thought was two young people arguing in the clothing section of the grocery store.

Then, she told the jury, she saw the reflection of a knife.

"I screamed. I said, 'What are you doing?' When the weapon came out of Clémence, there was a sound that came out of Clémence. It was like her last breath," Nadege-Joseph testified.

Tshilumba has pleaded not guilty.

The trial is expected to last five weeks.