'He punched me in the face, that's all I remember.' Jury hears from casino manager
Rodney Frenette gave a statement to police from his hospital bed 3 weeks before he died in 2023
Three weeks before Rodney Frenette died in hospital after an altercation at a Moncton casino, he gave a short statement to police from his hospital bed about what happened.
The audio of that statement was played Thursday for a jury in the trial of Michael Glaspy, who was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of Frenette.
Frenette spoke in a soft voice and told a police officer that he remembered "keeping an eye" on Glaspy and his wife as they danced at Casino New Brunswick on March 4, 2023.
Const. Alexandre Benoit, who testified Thursday, took the statement on March 7 as Frenette lay in his hospital bed recovering from a fractured skull, with his wife and daughter by his side.
Glaspy looked down at the floor as the recorded statement played in court Thursday.
Frenette said Glaspy asked him why he was looking at them. He said he eventually told him he was going to stop serving him alcohol. He remembered speaking with Glaspy for about 10 seconds and said, "He was kind of in my face."
Then Frenette described the altercation, which ultimately led to him falling backward and hitting his head on the floor of the Hub City Pub inside the casino.
"I remember him meeting me at the pub, and I remember him coming towards me," Frenette could be heard saying in the audio recording.
Const. Benoit asked Frenette if he remembered pushing Glaspy.
"I think he came right in my face and I pushed him away," he replied.
"He punched me in the face. That's all I remember."
Frenette said he also remembered waking up in the ambulance and eventually being taken to the hospital.
Before the statement played, Justice Christa Bourque gave the 12 jurors instructions about what they were about to hear.
"It may be less reliable … because Rodney Frenette was not under oath," she said. "And he could not be cross-examined like the other witnesses you have heard."
She also said certain parts of the statement were removed from the portion the jury heard in court.
Neurosurgeon gives timeline of Frenette's decline
Dr. Antonios El Helou, a neurosurgeon at the Moncton Hospital who treated Frenette for much of his hospital stay, elaborated on what the jury heard Tuesday about Frenette's 24 days in hospital.
Tuesday, defence lawyer Gilles Lemieux read discharge notes that said Frenette was on the verge of being discharged from the hospital after he suffered a traumatic brain injury.
El Helou said 36 hours after Frenette was admitted and had several CT scans, he was showing signs of "healing" and was accepted into a rehabilitation unit.
He said Frenette was waiting for a bed to open up so he could work on "cognitive and behavioural" function.
When asked by the Crown whether Frenette had been cleared to go home at any point, El Helou said no, clarifying that he was merely being discharged from one unit to another, which was essentially a step closer to going home.
He said whether Frenette would have eventually been discharged would be "a rehabilitation determination."
The jury had perviously heard that Frenette fell in his hospital room on March 16, according to notes Lemieux read in court.
El Helou said he was not on-call when the fall happened but that he recalls the nursing staff's notes confirming it did happen.
"They found him on the floor," he said. "It was an unwitnessed fall."
El Helou's testimony laid out the timeline of events after the fall, some of which had not been fully flushed out in court.
He said that on March 16, after the fall at the hospital, he began to notice worsening neurological symptoms in Frenette. He said his speech was slurred, he had weakness in his right arm and had lost some internal sensations.
He eventually had difficulty swallowing and breathing on his own, and was re-admitted into the neurosurgery department's intensive care unit where he was intubated to breathe.
An MRI on March 17 was shown to the jury. It confirmed swelling in Frenette's brain. El Helou said he also discovered blood clots around that time.
Hospital fall 'could be a contributing factor'
El Helou said by March 27, Frenette had "continued to decline" and developed more blood clots. He said he eventually suffered a stroke, entered "a deep coma" and died on March 28.
Summarizing Frenette's 24-day stay, El Helou said it was considered a "moderate" traumatic brain injury when Frenette was first admitted, and that "an event" that he was not able to diagnose ultimately led to his rapid deterioration.
He couldn't confirm whether the fall in hospital contributed to that decline.
Earlier in his testimony, El Helou disclosed that Frenette was already on blood thinners, which he had to adjust several times during his treatment.
During his cross-examination, Lemieux asked El Helou whether existing factors in Frenette's health could have played a role in his stroke.
El Helou replied, "he had multiple risk factors to developing a stroke."
In his final question, Lemieux asked him whether he believed the fall in the hospital led to Frenette's death.
He said, "It could be a contributing factor."
Before adjourning for the day, the judge told the jury the trial would resume on May 28, when the defence will be ready to call its first witness.
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