Dr. Gillian Morrison heard a ruckus in the street beneath her seventh-storey window at St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in St. John’s and sprung into action.
Her first instinct was to grab her iPhone. She hit record on a 17-second video that’s now a key piece of evidence in the trial for three people accused of second-degree murder in the killing of 31-year-old Dylan Jordan.
Morrison told the court she saw three men in a street fight. Two men went to the ground, and a woman in a red shirt came running across the road. She saw the woman repeatedly kick one of the fallen men in the head as he lay on the ground.
The doctor testified she saw one of the men slip a long object, possibly a knife, into the back of his shorts as he walked away from the scene.
Bradley Morrell, Jason Wells and Veronica Whalen are now charged with second-degree murder. The Crown alleges Morrell and Wells each stabbed Jordan once, while Whalen delivered blows to his head as he lay dying on the street on July 31, 2024.
Once all three alleged assailants were back inside, Morrison took off running.
“I’m afraid that [Jordan] is hurt pretty badly and I want to get down as quick as I can,” she told the court on Wednesday.
Once outside the building, Morrison made the short sprint across to Golf Avenue. She found Jordan in a lifeless state.
“He’s not moving anymore,” she testified. “He doesn’t appear to be breathing. I looked at his eyes and his pupils were dilated. There was blood up around the head region.”
She was hesitant to check for a pulse on his neck, since blood was pooling and she wasn’t wearing gloves. She instead reached for his groin, checking the femoral artery.
“He was cold to touch,” Morrison said.
Another bystander was already on scene when Morrison got there. Dennis Ash, a volunteer firefighter with nearly two decades of experience, was walking into St. Clare’s when the brawl broke out.
“It was the sound of a fight,” he testified on Wednesday. “Shouting, screaming, cursing…. It had a violent tone to it.”
Ash made his way towards the scene as it unfolded. By the time he got there, Jordan was on the ground and the other three people had gone back inside a house across the street.
“His eyes were rolled. There seemed to be life but it was a very faint aspiration,” Ash said.
As he came within feet of Jordan, Ash noticed something else. There was a handgun on the ground near Jordan’s legs. A collapsible baton also lay nearby. Another man, who was not involved in the fight, was standing near the gun. Ash said he began to yell at the man to back up. He took out his phone and snapped seven photos of Jordan and the weapons on the ground.
“It was for scene preservation I guess,” he said.
Within minutes, Ash described a “swarm” of health-care workers running up from the hospital to Golf Avenue. He joined a team of people taking turns doing chest compressions on Jordan while they waited for an ambulance.
Morrison described a similar scene.
“More and more people come out,” she said. “I know somebody else had a crash cart. We were able to get some equipment like a bag mask to try to administer oxygen. It was quite chaotic.”
Jordan was hooked up to a heart monitor. Morrison said it showed P.E.A. — pulseless electrical activity — which meant there was no hope of shocking him with a defibrillator.
On cross-examination by defence counsel, Morrison’s memory was put to the test.
She had testified she saw two men — one shirtless, and one in a white shirt — delivering blows to a man in a black shirt. She initially said she saw one man go to the ground, while the other two continued to hit him.
Morrell’s lawyer, Mark Gruchy, then played another video for Morrison. This one was recorded by the hospital’s CCTV system, which captured most of the brawl from a distance.
She agreed the video showed two men going to the ground — Morrell and Jordan — and not just one as she’d previously stated.
Defence lawyer Iain Hollett then replayed the video and asked Morrison if she saw the man in the white shirt — his client, Jason Wells — throw any punches or kicks towards Jordan.
She said no.
“So you didn’t see him touch black shirt guy at all?” Hollett asked.
“No,” Morrison replied.
“So you have no actual memory of white shirt guy doing anything?”
“My memory of that day is very blurry. It was so chaotic,” Morrison said.
Court places publication ban on videos
CBC News was granted access to the videos recorded by Morrison and the St. Clare’s CCTV system on Wednesday morning, as is routine with exhibits entered as evidence in criminal trials.
Upon learning CBC News intended to air portions of the videos, Crown prosecutor Colin Sheppard asked the court for a publication ban to prevent their publication.
His concern was that witnesses who have yet to testify could see the videos before giving their testimony, thus tainting their recollections.
The ban was granted by Justice Trina Simms, preventing the videos from being disseminated to the public until the Crown has finished calling its witnesses.
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