Erick Buhr insists he didn't kill his grandmother while testifying at second-degree murder trial

Erick Buhr, the man on trial for second-degree murder in the death of his grandmother Viola Erb, took the stand Thursday to testify in his own defense.

In his opening statement to the jury, defense lawyer Bruce Ritter said: “Mr. Buhr, I will be submitting to you, was wrongly accused of the crime of murder.”

Ritter also told the jury that, at the end of the trial, he would be asking them to return a verdict of not guilty.

On Sept. 24, 2022, Viola Erb was found badly injured in the kitchen of her home near Baden, Ont. She died shortly after the arrival of first responders.

Buhr, who is now 41-years-old, testified Thursday that a couple of weeks before her death he was “mutually released” from his job as the corporate parts and warranty manager at Erb Transport, the company his grandparents founded.

Ritter asked why his employment had ended.

“My drug use,” Buhr explained, adding he had been smoking crack cocaine and it had gotten to the point where he couldn’t work without using.

Buhr said he’d been living with his grandmother for two years.

“We got along really well,” he told the court.

Buhr started wearing an ankle monitor about three months prior to Erb’s death. He testified that he’d received one call from the company that monitored his location, after they received a notification that was out of bounds. Buhr said he’d been asleep in his bed when he got the call.

Erick Buhr in a photograph taken by Waterloo Regional Police on Sept. 24, 2022. (Court exhibit)

When asked about the day of his grandmother’s death, Buhr admitted he left the house around 12:30 p.m. to use drugs in a wooded area on the property, located near public trails.

Buhr told the court he smoked crack cocaine. He said it didn’t affect him too much but did give him a bit of a high and “the ability to carry on with the rest of my day.”

Ritter asked if crack cocaine had ever made him violent or forget what he’d done.

“No,” Buhr replied.

Ritter then asked if crack cocaine ever made Buhr act differently than normal.

“Definitely not,” Buhr insisted.

After about 45 minutes, Buhr said he went back into the house through a back door he’d left unlocked.

That’s when he found his grandmother lying on the kitchen floor.

Emergency services respond to a home on Sandhills Road on Saturday Sept. 24, 2022. (Dan Lauckner/CTV Kitchener)

“She was completely unresponsive,” Buhr testified. “Immediately I was traumatized and overwhelmed and panicked.”

Buhr said Erb’s face was unrecognizable, adding that her hair and face were covered in blood.

“I tried tapping her face to make her alert,” he claimed. “She was completely unresponsive to that.”

Buhr said he then tried to put Erb into a recovery position, something he’d learned previously in a first aid course, but could not get a good grip on his grandmother due to all the blood.

Buhr testified he then became even more panicked.

“I had this idea I should splash water on her face,” he explained.

Buhr said he grabbed Erb by her ankles and moved her a few feet towards the sink, where he planned to use the hose to spray water on her. Then, he changed his mind.

“I just thought, like, that she’s gone,” Buhr testified. “I decided this was a silly idea and I moved her back to where she was located, where I found her.”

He said he did that because he thought the body needed to be where it had originally been found for a subsequent forensic investigation.

Buhr then called 911. Court previously heard an audio recording of that interaction.

While he was on the call, Buhr said he looked through the house to see if anyone else was there.

That’s when he noticed he was trailing blood throughout the house, he testified.

“So I went upstairs and I took off my clothes,” Buhr said.

“Why did you feel it was necessary or appropriate to change your clothes?” Ritter asked.

“A) I was completely covered in blood and I was traipsing blood through the house, and B), the blood was really grossing me out,” Buhr replied, adding he had fainted at the sight of blood in the past.

He said he then went to get more clothes from the closet, and noticed when he turned on the closet light, his hand had left a smear of blood on the wall.

“So I decided to wash my hands,” he said.

Bloodstain at the home of Viola Erb and Erick Buhr. (Court exhibit)

Buhr testified that he went to the upstairs bathroom to wash and dry his hands.

All this happened, he said, while he was on the 911 call, though he noted his hand washing was not audible on the recording.

Bloodstain on a bathroom sink at the home of Viola Erb and Erick Buhr. (Court exhibit)

Buhr said when he first found his grandmother, he had been wearing black jeans, a Blue Jays t-shirt and socks that police later found in his bedroom.

He added when he saw the blood on his hands, before getting changed, he made flicking motions with his hand, which made the blood fly off of his fingers. He also described wiping his hands on his jeans to try and remove the blood.

Jeans found at Erick Buhr's home after his grandmother's fatal attack. (Court exhibit)

Buhr stated he put his soiled clothes on the floor of his bedroom, where his laundry hamper was.

“Did you try and hide any of them?” Ritter questioned.

“No,” Buhr responded.

Ritter then asked Buhr why he didn’t do CPR on his grandmother when the 911 dispatcher asked.

“Because, in my opinion, she was gone already and the blood was already grossing me out. I couldn’t stand to think about doing it,” he told court.

Buhr then described a police officer and ambulance arriving at the home. He said one of the EMS workers asked “in a concerned tone” if he had changed his clothing.

“My knee-jerk reaction was to say, ‘no, I didn’t,’” Buhr testified.

“Was that the truth?” Ritter asked.

“No, it wasn’t,” Buhr replied.

Buhr said he went to his bedroom with an officer where he was soon told that his grandmother had died. Then they moved to the garage.

“At this point, I was starting to worry,” Buhr said.

His concern was about the cocaine in the house, which he worried would get him in trouble for breaching the terms of his conditional sentence, and that police would think he was the one who hurt his grandmother.

Buhr said he felt overwhelmed as police kept asking him how he knew she was murdered.

“In my head… it’s obvious,” he testified, citing the blood and the way her face looked.

Ritter then asked about the multiple times police asked Buhr if he had changed his clothes, and whether he had ever corrected the lie he had told earlier.

“No, I didn’t. I felt I needed to run with it,” Buhr testified. “Once I lied, I felt I needed to continue lying or else I’d seem suspicious.”

Buhr was also shown photos of his hands, taken in his garage on the day of Erb’s death.

He noted both hands had dried blood on them, and some small nicks, that he attributed to tree cleaning work in the forest during the previous days. He testified that neither of his hands were swollen.

Viola Erb. (Mark Jutzi Funeral Home)

Ritter finished by asking: “Mr. Buhr, did you kill your grandmother?”

Buhr replied: “No, I did not.”

More to come on this developing story.