The jury has finished hearing evidence at the trial of two people accused of murdering Nadia Gonzales at a Dartmouth apartment building in June 2017.
Samanda Rose Ritch, 22, of Halifax and Calvin Maynard (C.J.) Sparks, 26, of Dartmouth are charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.
The pair’s trial got underway Nov. 4 in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax.
Prosecutors closed their case Wednesday morning.
Defence lawyers Peter Planetta, who represents Ritch, and Malcolm Jeffcock then announced their clients would not be calling any evidence.
Justice Christa Brothers excused the eight male and four female jurors until next Tuesday, when lawyers are expected to make their closing arguments.
The judge said she hopes to begin her final instructions Tuesday and to place the case in the jury’s hands the next day.
Gonzales, a 35-year-old mother of two from Hammonds Plains, was stabbed to death at an apartment building at 33 Hastings Dr. on the evening of June 16, 2017. Her body was discovered in a hockey bag on a landing in the building’s west stairwell.
Sparks and Ritch were arrested separately the next morning on Federal Avenue in Halifax.
The Crown alleges Sparks and Ritch armed themselves with knives and attacked Gonzales and a man named John Patterson in the hallway outside apartment 16 on the fourth floor of the Hastings Drive building.
Patterson, 72, testified early in the trial that he and Gonzales went to the apartment that night to deliver crack cocaine to tenant Wayne (Batman) Bruce.
Patterson was stabbed six times before making his way outside and collapsing on the front lawn of an elementary school across the street.
After police arrived at the scene, they learned they were dealing with a homicide.
Crown attorneys Rob Kennedy and Steve Degen called 39 people to testify at the trial, including 19 police officers, Bruce, his roommate Marion Graves, and a DNA expert.
The province’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Matthew Bowes, told the court Monday that Gonzales was stabbed 30 to 40 times and bled to death.
An undercover police officer who was placed in a cell next to Ritch’s at the Halifax police station on the night of June 17, 2017, testified Tuesday that the young woman shared details of the killing with her.
The undercover officer, who can only be called Sherri because of a publication ban on her identity, said Ritch told her that her ex had stabbed a girl about 30 times and put her in a duffel bag.
According to the officer, Ritch stated that she didn’t stab the girl but helped put her in the bag and that the girl had scratched her in the face.
Ritch is also alleged to have told the undercover operative that her ex had stabbed her in the left ring finger during the incident and that she had received stitches.
The officer said Ritch also disclosed that the victim had left her phone in a vehicle and that they had gone through it and found text messages to the cops. “She was snitching hard-core,” Ritch allegedly said.
Ritch said the plan was to hide the duffel bag containing the body in a storage unit downstairs in the apartment building, the officer testified, and that the cops didn’t know a hole had been dug in an alley somewhere.
Graves, a 48-year-old crack addict and dealer who moved in with Bruce about two weeks before the killing, began testifying Monday and was in the middle of being cross-examined Tuesday when she failed to return to court after lunch. She was back in the witness box Wednesday, however, and was questioned by Jeffcock for just over an hour.
Graves was not home at the time of the incident. She admitted Wednesday that when she first heard a woman had been killed and a man injured, she thought Ritch and Sparks were the victims.
She agreed with a suggestion by Jeffcock that while she was living with Bruce at Hastings Drive, she was aware of “pressures” exerted on that apartment regarding the source of cocaine that was being sold.
“Where was that pressure coming from?” Jeffcock asked Graves.
“Frankie,” she replied, referring to Frankie Tynes, whose name has come up throughout the trial as someone who was involved in drug dealing in Dartmouth
