Witness to random shooting was Facebook friends with alleged gunman, court hears

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This article was published 16/11/2017 (2345 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a seemingly random parking-lot shooting that seriously injured her friend, a Winnipeg teen used Facebook to try to point police toward a suspect, court heard Friday.

Bailey Willett, now 19, was in a parked car with her friend, Calli Vanderaa, and several other people at a Mac’s Convenience Store on Autumnwood Drive in the early morning of Oct. 24, 2015, when a man pulled a gun on them and fired through the passenger window. A bullet struck Vanderaa in the chest.

After the shooting, Willett testified Friday, she discovered she was Facebook friends with the man who would later be arrested for attempted murder.

Matthew McKay has pleaded not guilty to stealing an RCMP officer’s gun and later using it to shoot Vanderaa.

The night of the shooting, the accused, then 22, was at a high school party hosted by the son of an RCMP officer, court previously heard. McKay is accused of rifling through the officer’s police vehicle, stealing his gun, leaving the party on a stolen bicycle and later firing a single bullet at the parked car outside the store.

Willett, who spent a night in custody for failing to show up to court when she was scheduled to testify as a Crown witness earlier this week, told court she explored McKay’s Facebook page looking for photos of him after a school friend tipped her off the shooter might be “Matthew.”

That school friend, Yvette Swain, previously testified she saw McKay leave the party with what she assumed was a police-issued gun and looked up a photo of him to send to Bailey after the shooting.

“When I seen it, I kind of hit me that it was him,” Willett said of the photo. She then sent McKay’s photo to police and also showed it to her boyfriend at the time, who was also present during the shooting.

“And he said that it’s not him, and told me to never mind or don’t worry about it,” Willett said.

She testified she believed the shooter had been flashing gang hand signs just before he pulled out the gun, but said she only realized what he was doing after she saw Facebook photos of him making similar “B” hand gestures.

Willett admitted texting another Crown witness in the case earlier this week and telling him she didn’t remember parts of what happened the night of the shooting. During cross-examination questioning from defence lawyer Todd Bourcier, she said she offered to show Vanderaa the Facebook photo of McKay while her friend was recovering in hospital, but said Vanderaa had already seen it.

“I was always asking her what she remembers (about the shooting) and asking her her point of view on it,” Willett said.

“Were you trying to fix any problems with your memory when you were asking and talking about this?” Bourcier asked.

“No,” Willett answered. “Just trying to sympathize with her.”

In an emotional testimony Thursday, Vanderaa took the witness stand and told the judge she is still recovering from the shooting, suffering from “very bad” post-traumatic stress disorder and scheduled to undergo her third surgery next month as a result of complications stemming from the bullet wound.

“Physically, my body’s just not the same anymore. I can’t do boxing anymore because it hurts my body,” Vanderaa said.

She recounted the events leading up to the shooting, though Bourcier pointed out her memory seemed to differ from other witnesses’ versions of what happened before the gun went off.

Vanderaa said she planned to sleep over at Willett’s house, but went to the Mac’s with her before they called a group of male friends to pick them up. Vanderaa testified she was sure she had seen the shooter earlier standing with another man with bikes outside the store when she went in. He hadn’t said anything to her, she said.

After she got in the car, the shooter came up to the vehicle, Vanderaa said.

“He’s yelling and screaming, but the windows were rolled up so no one could make out what he was saying, and at the same time I was yelling at the driver to back up because we didn’t know who he was,” she said.

“And then before I could even get all of that out, I turned back and looked out the window and he had the gun in the waist of his pants and he lifted up his shirt, pointed the gun right at the window and shot me.”

Vanderaa said she didn’t immediately realize she’d been shot.

“My whole body started getting really warm and everything started getting black, like my vision was blurry, everything was starting to dim out. And then I told everyone in the car, ‘Guys, I think I was shot.'”

The Court of Queen’s Bench trial continues next week in front of Justice Sheldon Lanchbery and has been scheduled for three weeks.

Earlier this year, Calli Vanderaa and her father, Corey, resolved a lawsuit they launched against the attorney general of Canada, seeking damages over alleged unsafe storage of the RCMP officer’s gun. The Winnipeg Police Service was called in to investigate and determined the matter didn’t warrant criminal charges against the RCMP officer.

The RCMP has said the outcome of its internal investigation can’t be disclosed. The officer remains on duty.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay