Dramatic audio heard at Hyatt trial

Photo: Trevor Rockliffe

File photo from June 3, 2010 shows RCMP taking down police tape from the Peachland crime scene.

A former boyfriend of Ashlee Hyatt described seeing Hyatt stop in the middle of a fight and walk over to him, before dropping to the ground with her neck gushing blood outside a Peachland house party.

The testimony was heard during the continuation of the Kelowna trial for the 18-year-old teen accused of stabbing to death Hyatt at the party on June 2, 2010.

The statement was made by a young man on an audio recording made at the preliminary inquiry. He cannot testify again because he recently died in a vehicle accident.

On the night Hyatt died, he said he arrived at the party and found about 10 people drinking on the deck.

When crown counsel Murray Kaay asked on  the recording how well the witness knew different people at the party, he said at one time he had an on and off relationship with Hyatt. On that night, the relationship was tricky, he said.

He had known the host of the party since grade school but had only been friends with the accused for a few months.

On the night of the incident, the witness said he was invited by text message to show up. Not long after he got there, another teen he had been seeing dragged him into the bathroom.

He did not talk to the accused during the initial party, but did speak to Hyatt before she died. She was asking him questions about the teen he was seeing. She was always asking questions, he testified.

He did not drink, but noticed some of the girls were drunk as soon as he got there.

The accused was super loud and her eyes were all over the place, and the girl he was seeing was in roughly the same state.

The host of the party was slurring her words a little bit, and it appeared that Hyatt and the boyfriend of the accused were also drinking, but they appeared fine.

Initially there were no problems. The atmosphere changed when the accused started kissing the guys at the party, the witness said.

Some of the boys left and the next thing he knew was the accused and her boyfriend were screaming at each other in the road.

Photo: Trevor Rockliffe

File photo from June 3, 2010 shows RCMP as they prepare to leave the Peachland crime scene.

"I heard the accused yelling talk to me, blah blah, blah, but he didn't want to talk to her," he said.

Hyatt was trying to drag the boyfriend away from the accused, when the two girls began bickering.

Before long they were yelling at each other, with Hyatt telling the accused to stay away from her boyfriend.

"They were definitely insulting each other, I heard the F.... word and other words," he said.

The yelling escalated into a fight. The girls were rolling around on the ground in the middle of the street hitting each other with their fists.

Hyatt hit the accused in the face a couple of times and they were both pulling each other's hair and calling each other sluts, as the witness stood on the side of the road.

As the two exchanged blows, the young man remembered thinking he should step in pretty quick.

"The accused was pretty pissed off. She reached inside her purse and grabbed the knife," he said.

At the time she was just holding it in her hand and saying "I'll stab you," he recalled.

The next thing that happened was Hyatt's hand was cut. She showed the accused her hand and said " you just cut my hand you f....... slut."

As they started going at it Hyatt just stopped, looked at him and covered her neck, which was bleeding quite a bit.

She walked to him and he applied pressure to the wound, as he tried to call 911 at the same time.

"I got an ambulance on the way," he said. "Then her eyes rolled behind her head and her face was starting to go blue."

As another teen and the man who arrived to break up the party tended to the fallen teen, he ran down the road to flag down the ambulance.

Also on the scene was the teen who hosted the party, who was fighting with the accused trying to get the knife out of her hand. The girl he was seeing at the time came out and said to the accused, "are you kidding me, did you actually do that?"

As the witness ran to get the ambulance, the accused was running behind him. He recalled saying you should probably get out of here, you should probably leave.

Earlier in the day, testimony was heard from the doctor who performed the autopsy on Hyatt.

Dr. William Currie, an expert in forensic pathology, said it was blood loss from a stab wound above Hyatt's collarbone  on the right side that caused her death.

There were other superficial wounds on her cheek and hairline.

Hyatt's parents remained outside the courtroom during the doctor's testimony.

During the audio recording from the witness who died, family members and friends of Hyatt openly wept and wiped their eyes with tissues.

The defence is expected to call its first witnesses on Friday. The accused will most likely take the stand next week.