Trial retraces last steps of battle rapper Pat Stay before his death
Stay, 36, was stabbed in a downtown Halifax nightclub early on the morning of Sept. 4, 2022
The jury in the second-degree murder trial of Adam Drake heard testimony Friday retracing Pat Stay's last movements before he was killed.
The Dartmouth battle rapper, 36, was stabbed in a downtown Halifax club early on the morning of Sept. 4, 2022, and was pronounced dead in hospital shortly after. Drake, now 34, was arrested a few days later.
Corey Ryan Good, a longtime friend of Stay's, testified Friday afternoon in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Dartmouth. He said Stay attended his wedding on the afternoon of Sept. 3 at his home in Lawrencetown, N.S., a community about 35 kilometres east of Halifax.
Good told the court that on the day before the wedding, Stay had put out a diss track targeting American rapper The Game. Good did not elaborate on what the two musicians might have been feuding about.
Shawn Knowles followed Good into the witness box. Knowles was the bar manager at Celtic Corner in downtown Dartmouth. He told the court Stay and some other men showed up at the bar on Sept. 3 just before last call at midnight and ordered shots and beers.
Knowles said it wasn't long before Stay left the bar and headed for Halifax, where he was fatally stabbed.
Much of Friday's testimony was from a forensic identification officer, Det. Const. Randy Wood, who was testifying for a second day. He was called to the Yacht Club Social at around 1:40 a.m. on Sept. 4, about an hour after Stay was stabbed in the Halifax nightclub.
Wood immediately started taking videos and photographs of the crime scene, beginning in front of the club where Stay had collapsed after staggering out of the building.
Wood was cross-examined by Drake's lawyer, Michael Lacy.
Under questioning, the veteran officer admitted there was a lot of traffic through the bar that night, making it difficult to determine what related directly to the killing.
Lacy played Wood parts of security videos that showed even police officers were passing back and forth through the blood trail from the stabbing.
Wood said he recorded 44 separate footwear impressions on the floor around the crime scene. He also conceded that his evidence photos were taken with the lights on and the room empty, while the security videos showed the lighting was murky at the time of the attack.
The trial, scheduled to run for five weeks, resumes Tuesday after the holiday weekend.
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