The jury at a Halifax murder trial was sent home early without hearing any evidence Monday after an issue arose that required the judge to make a ruling.
Samanda Rose Ritch, 22, of Halifax and Calvin Maynard Sparks, 26, of Dartmouth are charged with first-degree murder in the June 16, 2017, stabbing death of Nadia Gonzales.
Gonzales, 35, of Hammonds Plains, was attacked in a hallway of an apartment building at 33 Hastings Dr. in Dartmouth. Her body was found in a hockey bag on a landing in a stairwell.
Ritch and Sparks are also charged with attempting to murder John Patterson, 72, who has testified he went to the building with Gonzales that evening to deliver crack cocaine to Wayne (Batman) Bruce, who lived on the fourth floor.
Gonzales and Patterson were stabbed outside Bruce’s apartment.
Two people wearing dark hoodies were seen running from the area after the incident.
A knife believed to have been used in the killing was discovered under shrubs on a nearby property. Another knife was found in the hockey bag with Gonzales’ body.
The trial got underway Nov. 4 in Nova Scotia Supreme Court and was originally scheduled to sit for 19 days, until the end of this week. But Justice Christa Brothers notified jurors Friday that the trial will go into next week.
When the trial broke for the weekend, the Crown was playing intercepted recordings of phone calls Sparks placed from the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth in the weeks following his June 17, 2017, arrest.
Andrew Miller, a captain at the jail, was expected back on the stand Monday for the playing of more recordings, but he was kept waiting while lawyers argued the admissibility of certain evidence.
The details of the voir dire, or hearing within a hearing, are banned from publication.
In the phone calls played in court so far, Sparks asks a man to destroy the SIM card from a cellphone he had been using, expresses concern about Ritch “talking too much” and discusses injuries he had on his hands when he was arrested.
When a woman asks him what happened to his hands, Sparks replies: “The murder thing happened."
Before the judge excused the nine male and four female jurors Monday afternoon, she told them they can expect to hear a full day of evidence Tuesday and a half-day of testimony Wednesday.
