A passerby who held 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel as she lay bleeding to death on a Toronto snowbank testified in court Wednesday at the trial of one of the people accused in her murder.
The man said he was driving home on New Year's Day 2008, when he saw the girl staggering along the street.
He rolled down his window and asked her if she needed help. She told him she had been stabbed.
"It hurts so much, it hurts so much," Gavin Shoebottom said Stefanie kept repeating.
Outside court, he told CTV Toronto: "I just saw her stumbling along the snowbank. She'd been stabbed, and I did my best to help her."
Shoebottom immediately got a blanket out of his car and tried to help the girl, calling 911. "She needed help, so I wanted to help her," Shoebottom said.
The teen collapsed and when paramedics came about nine minutes later, she was unconscious, without vital signs.
The jury is also heard hear from Stefanie's brother Ian. The 13-year-old recalled her taking the phone call that lured her out to her death.
"'I'll be back in two seconds,'" she told him, he testified. Ian never saw his sister alive again.
Rengel died after being stabbed six times in the abdomen. Her body was found steps away from her family home in the city's East York neighbourhood.
During the Crown's opening arguments on Tuesday, prosecutors alleged that the suspect was jealous of Rengel and pressured her boyfriend to kill her.
The court heard a transcript of messages that were typed over an online MSN chat in which the suspect threatened to break up with her boyfriend, block him from MSN, withhold sex and make out with another guy if he didn't do as she wanted.
"(She) didn't just counsel or encourage, she pressured (her boyfriend) into killing Stefanie," prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt said during his opening statements.
The boyfriend, now 19 years old, has also been charged with first-degree murder. His trial starts later this year. Both suspects can not be publicly identified because they were minors when the murder occurred.
On Tuesday, court also heard testimony from the victim's mother Patricia Hung. She said the boy visited their home months before Rengel was killed, warning the teen that he was being pressured to kill her.
Hung said she called the female suspect and warned her to stay away from her daughter. She also forbade the boy from visiting their home again.
Both of Rengel's parents are Toronto police officers.
"We thought we had dealt with the situation as best as we could at that point," she said.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Chris Eby
