The murder trial of Michael Ball began Monday with Crown attorney Roger Dietrich laying out the case he plans to make against the 24-year-old.
Ball is accused of killing Erin Howlett in the summer of 2013, then dumping her remains in the Grand River.
He has pleaded not guilty to murder and to committing an indignity to a body, and is on trial in Kitchener before a jury.
Monday, Dietrich explained to jurors how he would go about proving that Ball was behind the murder of the 28-year-old Elmira resident.
He claimed that at the time of the murder, the two had been dating for a couple of months, and their relationship was on the rocks.
Ball, Dietrich said, found a photo of another man’s private parts on Howlett’s phone, and began choking her.
“He choked her, then kneeled on her chest to get all the air out,” he said.
Jurors were also told to expect testimony from a man who saw Howlett’s body in Ball’s apartment after her death and helped Ball dispose of her remains.
“In the blackness of the night, they dropped her body in the river,” he said.
Justice Gerald Taylor instructed jurors not to consider Dietrich’s remarks as a roadmap of the case against Ball, not as facts.
Facts, the judge said, can only come from evidence and witness testimony.
After the opening remarks concluded, the first of the more than 40 expected witnesses took to the stand.
Brandon Flanagan told the court that he was the person who discovered the duffel bag containing Howlett’s body in the Grand River, eight days after she was last seen.
He was in the river tubing with friends, he said, found the bag six to eight feet off the shoreline and pulled it to the edge of the river.
“It didn’t smell good at all,” he said.
“It smelled like rotting flesh.”
Flanagan said he never opened the bag, but figured out what was inside because “the bag suctioned to the body” after it was pulled ashore.
The trial continues Tuesday. It is scheduled for 12 weeks.
