Though conversations have almost certainly been had privately for the past 19 years, on Tuesday afternoon, two of the people who were at the party where Misha Pavelick was killed spoke publicly.

Kyle Friday answered slowly and seemingly deliberately on the witness stand as he was asked questions.

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He was one of the organizers of the annual weekend-long Miller High School grad party that year – he helped collect money for wristbands and signed the agreement to rent out all of Kinookimaw campground for the weekend.

During the day, people were hired to keep watch at the gate to the campground and keep people out who didn’t have wristbands, but Friday said the students took turns watching the gate. He and others were working the gate that Sunday night.

Friday told court that a group of uninvited people rushed the gate and got past them.

“It wasn’t too long after that people started screaming and running, saying someone’s been stabbed,” he remembered.

He said he left the gate and went toward the main bonfire on the campground, which is when Friday saw Misha lying on the ground. He said two people were trying to help Misha, holding his chest and trying to stop the bleeding.

Friday told court he went over and squeezed Misha’s hand and checked his eyes – he knew he was gone. Then he ran back to the gate and saw a group of people getting into their vehicles, and saw one man who appeared to be cleaning a knife.

The lawyer for the accused, Andrew Hitchcock, pointed out that Friday hadn’t told police about the knife at the time. He also challenged the witness about his timeline of what happened.

Ending the day was testimony from a friend of the accused, Dustin Scudder.

He described getting together with the accused and a number of other friends that night. He remembered going out to the campground, Misha hitting another of his friends in the face with a bottle, and then everyone getting into a “tussle”.

Scudder said he was grabbed and told to leave shortly after that, and the group headed back to their cars and went to Regina Beach, where he got into a fistfight with someone, it wasn’t said who, and then they drove back to Regina.

He also explained to court that he’d had a knife with him at the time, but said he thought he had, or had tried to, toss it into the bushes before heading into the campground.

Scudder said he had difficulty remembering many details about what happened that night or why he did some things, saying he was both very drunk that night and it had happened 20 years ago.

He couldn’t confidently answer questions about who was in which vehicle, what was said by whom, or who was fighting at the campground.

He couldn’t give a certain answer as to why he tried to toss his knife into the bushes, saying at one point he had it at the time because he was “young and dumb” and had tossed it because it was heavy and didn’t want to carry it around.

Scudder was shown a picture of a yellow folding knife with an eagle on it, and confirmed it was his knife. It was the same photo the Crown lawyer had shown during his opening statement, and explained that it didn’t have the DNA of the accused on it, but it did have the DNA of Derek Enns, the other person who was stabbed that night, and Scott Nelson, the man who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for that attack.

‘Extremely chaotic’: RCMP officer describes the scene

Sheri-Lynn Fedorowich was a corporal with the RCMP in May 2006 when Misha was killed. She told court she’d been patrolling in Regina Beach when she got a call about a possible stabbing at the Kinookimaw Campground nearby.

When she arrived, two other officers were already with a teenager who’d been stabbed.

Fedorowich said she and another officer continued into the campground – a later witness, retired RCMP Sergeant Kelly Rackel with the forensic identification unit, described it as a very treed-in area with sand roads.

The former corporal described the scene as “chaotic.”

“They were extremely volatile, they were intoxicated, they were running around the campground, they were screaming profanities, throwing beer bottles. It was just extremely chaotic,” she explained.

She said she came to where Pavelick was lying on the ground, someone was on the phone with 911 and another person was doing CPR on Pavelick.

Fedorowich said she took over CPR, and said the crowd was still large and angry, and there were threats from the crowd about what they would do to the officers if they didn’t help Pavelick.

In response to questions from defence lawyer Andrew Hitchcock, she said, given there were only two officers and a large crowd, they concentrated on Pavelick’s wellbeing rather than pursue any arrests for the threats.

Soon after, EMS arrived and Fedorowich said they loaded Pavelick into the back of the vehicle while the crowd shouted, threw beer bottles at and rocked the ambulance. She said Pavelick was pronounced dead by EMS there.

The former corporal said she and the other officer then tried to control the crowd, secure the scene, and get some idea of what happened. When she left the scene about an hour and a half later, she said there was still a large group of people drinking and partying like nothing had happened.

Rackel was brought in after Fedorowich to identify and explain the photos, maps and diagrams in the Crown’s photo book in evidence. Court saw many photos of the campground, the accused’s car at the time, and the other victim’s injuries.

Pavelick was killed in 2006 at a grad party near Regina Beach. His case remained open for 17 years until RCMP made an arrest in 2023. The man arrested was a youth at the time of the death so cannot be named. The Crown lawyer has said previously, if the accused is found guilty, he plans to ask for an adult sentence.