Cambridge bay woman grabbed accused’s weapon at gunpoint

Not long after Chris Bishop shot five people who tried to break into his house in Cambridge Bay, a half-drunk young woman disarmed him when he pointed his assault rifle at her.

Appearing as a witness May 31 at Bishop’s triple murder trial in Iqaluit on May 31, Eva Maksagak, now 29, testified she had been walking with friends after drinking with them when they heard screaming from Kullik Road in Cambridge bay on the early morning of Jan. 6, 2007.

When they arrived, Maksagak could see many Kullik Road residents in front of their houses.

Asked to estimate her state of intoxication at the time on a scale of one to 10, Maksagak told the court she had been at a “six.”

Maksagak ran down the street and discovered the body of Keith Atatahak beside a Nunavut Power Corp. truck parked in from of Bishop’s home at 4B Kullik Road.

“His eyes were open,” she recalled. “He just looked like he was knocked out.”

Maksagak ran to Bishop’s porch, where he stood. As she approached, she suddenly realized that he was still armed.

Behind him, Clara Wingnek was at the body of Dean Costa saying, “C’mon, baby, wake up.”

“I could see he [Costa] was no longer with us,” Maksagak told the court.

Bishop pointed his weapon at her face.

In court, Maksagak didn’t clearly recall what they said to each other, but she said, “Give me the gun! Look what you did!” – as she indicated Costa’s bloody corpse.

Under cross-examination, Maksagak confirmed earlier statements that she had made that Bishop told her he acted in self-defence, that “they were going to kill me [Bishop].”

When she shouted at Bishop, she pushed the barrel of the rifle away from her face, then yanked at it.

Maksagak told the court she doesn’t know anything about guns, so she did not know if the rifle was loaded at the time.

Bishop slipped the strap of the rifle off his shoulder and let her take it.

Maksagak ran across the street with the gun to the home of Bob and Brenda Jancke, the parents of one of the people she had been drinking with earlier that night.

Brenda Jancke pulled her daughter and a friend into the house and tried to grab Maksagak, but Maksagak slipped away.

Maksagak then ran to the body of Keith Atatahak.

“I grabbed him [Atatahak],” she said. “My legs were on both sides of his hips. I pulled him up, trying to make him get up. I tried to do CPR.”

“Did he respond?” asked Crown prosecutor Carla Ball.

“No he didn’t,” Magsagak answered, as she and spectators in the gallery sobbed.

“Tim Walsh [one of Magsagak’s drinking companions that night] came to me, said it was too late, we have to go, there’s nothing we could do,” Maksagak said.

“There’s nothing I could do,” she repeated.

While Walsh drove her away in his Canadian North truck, she realized her baby blue jacket was covered in blood.

She threw it out the window.