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Kelowna  

Was stabbing self defence?

Was Waylon Jackson going for his knife on the kitchen counter to finish off Chad Alphonse after winning their fight, or was he walking towards his common-law wife and infant child?

That's one of the main questions the 12-person jury at the Alphonse murder trial must decide once they begin their deliberations.

On March 11, 2016, after Jackson finished their fight by hitting Alphonse with a chair as he lay on the ground, Jackson threw the chair to the side and walked away.

It was then, the Crown says, that Alphonse got off the floor, pulled out his folding knife and slashed Jackson in the back, followed by two stabs to his chest, puncturing his lung and heart, all in front of his common-law spouse, Naomi Foureyes, and their five-week-old daughter.

The Crown and defence gave their closing submissions to the jury Wednesday, after two weeks of trial.

Alphonse's defence counsel, Terry LaLiberté, says that after beating Alphonse, Jackson was walking towards his own knife, which was on the kitchen counter behind Foureyes, and Alphonse preemptively stabbed Jackson in self-defence.

Crown prosecutor David Grabavac said Jackson had already won the fight, and was simply going to talk with Foureyes after she had yelled at him to stop hitting Alphonse. Grabavac said Alphonse stabbed Jackson because he was angry he had lost the fight, and he acted in retaliation.

“Bringing a knife to a chair fight is not reasonable,” Grabavac told the jury.

LaLiberté argued the sequence of events happened much faster than Grabavac made it seem, and the stabbing was a quick response made in self defence.

The fight started after a night of drinking at Naomi's and Jackson's home at 115 Gerstmar Road, as friends and family gathered to help decorate for Naomi's baby shower the next day.

Alphonse was dating Naomi's sister, and following the death, Alphonse told police Jackson was “like a brother” to him.

While the Crown told the jury Alphonse wasn't all that drunk on the evening in question, because police said he had no trouble standing or talking with them following his arrest, LaLiberté attempted to convince the jury otherwise.

He was gonzo, he didn't have any concept of what was going on,” LaLiberté said in his closing argument.

Additionally, LaLiberté said Grabavac's proposed sequence of injuries, starting with the stab wound in the back and followed by the two in the chest, is “pure speculation.”

“Please do not pay any attention to the Crown's timeline,” he said. “He's expanded time, we were joking earlier, like the movie The Matrix, everything was in slow motion. It wasn't, this happened all of a sudden.”

In his closing submission, LaLiberté told the jury several times the case before them was “simple.”

“You are not going to come anywhere close to proving beyond a reasonable doubt my client's intent to murder,” LaLiberté told the jury.

The jury is expected to begin their deliberation Thursday.



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