The Crown prosecutor in a Saskatoon manslaughter case dating back three years told the jury the incident was a “robbery gone wrong.”
The trial for Keith Napope, 31, began Monday in Saskatoon’s Court of Queen’s Bench. He’s charged with robbery and manslaughter in the death of 35-year-old Johnathon Keenatch-Lafond.
Crown prosecutor Sandeep Bains told the jury of six men and six women Keenatch-Lafond operated a small-scale drug business from an apartment unit he shared with his father on the 1400 block of 20th Street West.
Keenatch-Lafond was stabbed to death around midnight on Nov. 17, 2014. His nephew, who would let customers into the building to buy drugs or deliver them downstairs, was over that night, according to Bains.
Court heard a group rushed past the nephew and ran upstairs to the apartment unit after he went downstairs to let them in.
Bains described the scene as “chaos” and said at some point Keenatch-Lafond was stabbed in the leg and torso. He was rushed to hospital where he died.
Police had said officers were called to an apartment in the 1400 block of 20th Street West just after midnight, after receiving a call that intruders had entered a man’s suite and attacked him.
A manslaughter and a robbery charge were laid against Napope nine months after the stabbing.
The jury saw crime scene photos, including pictures of blood stains inside and outside of the apartment unit, in the building’s stairwell and on clothing.
Bains told the jury both Keenatch-Lafond and Napope’s DNA was found on a T-shirt at the crime scene.
During the incident, Keenatch-Lafond’s elderly father saw part of the incident after he came outside of his room in his wheelchair, according to Bains. The father is scheduled to testify as the Crown’s second witness Tuesday.
The trial is scheduled to last two weeks.
