The text-messaged threat Emily Altmann read aloud after a teen was mortally wounded at a bush party was so terrifying that honest young women were prepared to lie to the police.
Maya Pluchowski’s memory of what Altmann read to her and her friends in the car after Josue Silva was shot was this: “Tell your friends to keep their mouths shut or else something will happen to them too.”
“Can you actually put into words how terrifying that was for you?” Altmann’s defence lawyer Nathan Gorham asked during his cross-examination of Pluchowski, a Crown witness who was in Altmann’s car on July 31, 2021, when she heard the threat.
“It was so terrifying that it made me do something I would have never done, which is to lie or omit evidence,” she said.
Gorham read to her the words from a text that were part of the Crown’s opening statement almost three weeks ago: “Make sure everyone understands you forget the night” and “Anyone in your group snitched, you know what’s going to happen to them.”
“That sounds like it could be right,” Pluchowski said.
Pluchowski was testifying on Thursday for a second day at the second-degree murder trial of Altmann, 22, and Carlos Guerra Guerra, 23, who have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the shooting death of Western University student Silva, 18, who died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen at a southwest London bush party.
Altmann and Guerra Guerra also pleaded not guilty to assault with a weapon, namely a blunt object, on Logan Marshall, one of Silva’s closest friends, at the mid-summer party in an isolated bush that turned violent.
Pluchowski testified under questioning from assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser that not only was there a terrifying text message read to them, but Altmann told her and three other friends with her to keep their stories to the police straight and “not mention that any calls were made after we left the party and not mention that a fight was expected to happen.”
Also played for the jury were a few seconds of frantic screams and shouts from a short cell phone video recorded inside Altmann’s car after Altmann and two of her passengers ran back from the bush following the shooting. Pluchowski, who had stayed in car, recognized herself in a fleeting image, but she didn’t know who recorded the video.
One of the voices in the car can be heard yelling, “He shot him in the (expletive) stomach.”
Pluchowski said that was the voice of Altmann.
Pluchowski spent her first day of evidence on Wednesday describing the argument at the party full of young people near the fire pit between Altmann and Isabella Restrepo after an unwanted photo was snapped and, a few minutes later, a drink was thrown in the direction Altmann and Jamie Falardeau, two of the people Pluchowski came with to the party.
She also told the jury about the decision for her group to leave and how they were walked out by Marshall, who was Restrepo’s boyfriend, Restrepo and his friends. The argument continued on the walk down the path, with Restrepo saying “once I find out who you are I’m going to (expletive) kill you,” and Altmann fuming that she was going to call her larger friend named Candice to come and beat Restrepo.
Pluchowski said Altmann was still angry and was on the phone when they were in the car. “She was saying she was still going to arrange something and someone was still going to finish what had happened earlier.”
Pluchowski was uncomfortable but said nothing. “I just wanted to leave altogether,” she said.
They drove around for about 10 minutes making circles around the neighbourhood with Altmann at the wheel and still making phone calls and texting while she was driving.
Pluchowski hadn’t been drinking but she believed Altmann was intoxicated. “The overreaction to the situation led me to believe that alcohol was influencing that,” she said.
Altmann drove them back to the same parking spot on Grand Oak Cross. “I was under the impression we were waiting for this Candice girl to come,” Pluchowski said.
Pluchowski said Altmann’s anger had subsided “when she got confirmation of something.” Altmann said she was going back to the party, while Falardeau and her sister said they were going as well “ to watch the fight.”
Pluchowski and her friend McKenna Bain stayed in the car because they “didn’t want to be involved” and they wanted to go home. As they sat there scrolling through their phones, they heard what they thought was a firework.
Altmann and the Falardeaus were gone for five to 10 minutes, Pluchowski said, and returned screaming “Oh my God,” over and over, and Altmann saying, “He shot him in the stomach,” and that she believed “Logan” had been shot.
Altmann, Pluchowski said, was “very frantic, in shock.” She read them the text she received about keeping their mouths shut. Before dropping them off at Falardeau’s house, she was “trying to ensure we were all on the same page.”
Altmann then left. “She was going to meet up with some guy, but I don’t know who it was,” Pluchowski said.
Pluchowski hadn’t met Altmann until that night. She said she surmised what had happened and “I believed dangerous people would potentially come harm me as well if I co-operated with the police and I explained who I thought had done it or who had caused the death.”
None of them called 911. Pluchowski said she want to tell the truth but “I was still scared to tell the entire truth.”
The police came to her door on Aug. 1, 2021, the day after Silva died. She spoke to them on her patio with her parents present.
She said she followed Altmann’s instructions and omitted telling them about the arranging of the fight. Pluchowski said she thought the people involved might be associated with a gang and “could come hurt me or my family. . . . I was worried they could potentially kill me.”
As soon as the officers left, Pluchowski said she had a change of heart. “I just broke down,” she said. “The stress of it all I couldn’t handle.”
She said she immediately told her parents everything. By chance, the officers returned 10 minutes after her first statement because they had forgotten to get her phone number.
“I was crying. My dad asked if they would come back in and talk to me again,” she said.
She then gave a second, more complete statement that included information about the argument, the texts, the drives in the neighbourhood and how Altmann and the Falardeaus had returned to the bush for the possible fight.
The jury is not sitting on Friday, but returns on Monday when the trial continues.