‘He sounded scared for his life:’ Witness to brutal beating death testifies

A woman who was in the same house when Brooklyn Elijah Hiebert was tortured and beaten to death defended the man’s three accused killers in court at the same time she implicated them in his murder.

Hiebert, 20, was killed in the basement of a Selkirk Avenue gang drug house, Dec. 24, 2023. His body was found a week later wrapped in a shower curtain and duct tape behind a Flora Avenue church.

Christopher Kyle Wattman, 38, Hazel Flett, 38, and Victoria Lee Andrews, 28, are on trial charged with first-degree murder.

On Wednesday, a woman who lived in the house testified Hiebert arrived in the late evening or early morning hours in the company of Flett, another woman who lived at the house and a male gang associate, and within moments was embroiled in a “confrontation” over a lost phone, a financial debt and accusations Hiebert was a “skinner” (street slang for child abuser).

“Obviously they were upset, basically trying to get (Hiebert) to tell them the truth,” said the woman, who the Free Press is not identifying by name due to concerns about her safety. “And I don’t blame them because being accused of something like that is pretty serious.”

The witness said she was in her main floor bedroom when she heard Flett and the other woman direct Hiebert to go to the basement to “talk about things further.”

“I heard (Hiebert) saying ‘No, I don’t want to go to the basement,’ kind of yelling and freaking out, thinking he was going to die, which was obviously not planned at all,” the witness said. “I know that for a fact, because none of them are monsters, you know what I mean?”

Sometime later the male gang member left the house and Wattman, who had been staying at the house for a month or so, was called to the basement, the witness said. She said she heard sounds of Hiebert being assaulted for up to half an hour before Flett emerged from the basement and asked her for a pair of rubber gloves because Hiebert was “bleeding quite a bit.”

“She was trying to help beat him up and was afraid he might be HIV positive,” the witness said.

“She didn’t want to catch what he had, so she was being safe about it.”

The witness said Andrews, who had not yet been in the basement, told Flett she would take her place assaulting Hiebert.

The witness said she could hear Hiebert moaning and “in a lot of pain.”

“He sounded scared for his life,” she said. “At first he sounded like he was hopeful he might be able to change the situation, but after a while you could tell he was losing hope, felt defeated… and got more accepting of what was happening to him,… he just took it.”

The witness said Flett returned from the basement a second time “and sounded really pissed off. She said she didn’t want (Hiebert) up here unless he wasn’t breathing.”

“She wasn’t giving them a choice,” the witness said. “She want(ed) him dead.”

The witness said she later went to the basement and saw Hiebert lying dead on the floor, strapped to a chair and covered in blood.

Wattman and Andrews “were freaking out,” the witness said. “You could tell that they had made a mistake, that they were just realizing what they had done.”

After further prodding from prosecutor Adam Bergen, the witness testified she saw Wattman and Andrews beat Hiebert with bricks.

“They stopped when they saw me and I went upstairs,” she said.

The witness said Wattman and Andrews returned upstairs and asked her for a change of clothes, which she provided, and for cleaning supplies.

The witness was cross examined by lawyers for the three accused on Thursday.

The trial continues.

dean.pritchard@winnipegfreepress.com