The quick phone call at the bush bash from a friend who’d just left the party made Braedan Bubb-Clarke feel “threatened and endangered.”
The information was that a group of people he didn’t know were heading down the path and “there were weapons being brought to the party,” specifically a machete.
The call came about 15 minutes after he watched a man carry an argumentative woman down the dirt path out of the southwest London bush where about 100 young people had gathered on July 31, 2021, and where Western University student Josue Silva, 18, would be fatally shot.
Bubb-Clarke, 21, testified Wednesday at the second-degree murder trial of Emily Altmann, 22, and Carlos Guerra Guerra, 23. He said the friend who called him sounded scared, which made him scared. He assumed the people coming had something to do with an altercation by the bonfire between the man and woman and his friend Logan Marshall.
“Being his friend, I went over to see what was going on,” he said under questioning by assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser.
He said he didn’t see the first part of the argument. A “bigger-framed” blond man with earrings who Bubb-Clarke didn’t know was dragging a vocal woman away. Bubb-Clarke, Silva and Marshall were among the people who saw them leave, and effectively ended the argument.
Bubb-Clarke said he remembered saying “get . . . out of here” to the couple as they slowly left, with the woman still yelling at them. Then, the party resumed, until he got that phone call.
Altmann and Guerra Guerra have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Silva and not guilty to assault with a weapon of Marshall. The jury trial that’s slated to last 10 weeks is in its third week.
The jury has heard Altmann became engaged in an argument at the bush party after a drink was spilled on her friend group. They all left and Altmann, who told her friends she wanted to fight, made phone calls and sent texts before she and two others met Guerra Guerra and two others and returned to the bush where Silva was shot.
The Crown witness list has been a parade of young people who attended the mid-summer party. Many of them are friends while others are acquaintances or recognized each other because of social media.
Bubb-Clarke was 17 at the time of the bush party. He testified he wasn’t near Silva or Marshall when he received the phone call and his initial response was to go deeper into the woods. He quickly realized he was alone and he wanted to check on his friends.
He chose to head down the main path, where he said he encountered flashlights coming toward him. “I felt I was in danger,” he said.
Bubb-Clarke said he turned and ran down a side path and into the trees, He called it his “closest escape route to get away.”
He ran until he came to a dead end and kept going into the trees. He said he thought there were people near him because he could hear the branches cracking near him.
He said he looked at his phone and decided to call two friends, one of them Marshall, who “seemed like he was worried,” but quietly confirmed he was safe. The phone call then cut off.
“After the phone call ended, I remember hearing a loud bang,” Bubb-Clarke said. “I thought it was a gunshot.
“My mind was racing, I was not in a normative state,” he said. “I felt I was in danger even though I was away from the situation.”
And so, he called his father. “I told him I think somebody got shot and to come pick me up as soon as possible.” He sent his father his location from his cellphone.
His father was walking into the woods to find him just as the police arrived. Bubb-Clarke said he could see lights shining and the officers had weapons. He heard his father call his name.
Bubb-Clarke said he didn’t say anything at first because he was so frightened. “I spoke up and I said to the police that I’m unarmed and I put my hands up,” he said.
An officer and his dad walked him out to the main road, where he tried to give a coherent police statement. “I was just worried about the well-being of my friends,” Bubb-Clarke said.
He recalled a police officer telling him “there was a hole in somebody’s chest.” The officer said Silva’s name and noted there were life-threatening injuries.
“And that’s what made me break down,” he said. “That’s when I remember falling to the ground and freaking out.”
Bubb-Clarke said he saw no weapons at the party before the group arrived. He told Moser he had seen a silver-bladed machete at Silva’s house before and Silva had shown them an airsoft gun.
He also was shown a video clip from a party where one of his friends is laughing and holding another friend in a headlock and what looks like a handgun to his neck. Bubb-Clarke said he had seen the clip before and was at that house party held earlier in the summer of 2021.
But he said he didn’t see the incident in person. “Did this video concern you?” Moser asked.
“No, because I know (them), I know the circumstance and nobody was in a harmful situation,” Bubb-Clarke said.
But in cross examination, Altmann’s defence lawyer Nathan Gorham repeatedly asked Bubb-Clarke why he didn’t call 911while he was hiding and accused him of being part of a group that threatened and walked people they didn’t like out of the party.
And, Gorham suggested, once they found out the group was coming back, Bubb-Clarke, Marshall, Silva and others hid along the side of a concrete structure in the bush and walked out as the other group came in. “That is not true,” Bubb-Clarke said.
Gorham suggested there was a fight and Silva had a machete. Bubb-Clarke hid in the woods and didn’t call 911, he suggested, because he didn’t want to get his friends in trouble.
“You didn’t think any guy was chasing you with a gun …That’s the God’shonest truth, right?’ Gorham said.
“That is not the God’s honest truth,” Bubb-Clarke said.
In re-examination, Bubb-Clarke said through questions from Moser he wasn’t involved in any attack plan. He chose to hide alone to distance himself from his friends “because I felt I was in a situation that was going to go very bad and I wanted to get away from the drama.”
The trial continues on Thursday.