Murder trial hears details of shooting

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

CAPE DORSET – Early one Monday, around 2 a.m., Const. Jurgen Seewald picked up the phone and was told a man had a gun and wouldn’t leave his girlfriend’s house.

The RCMP dispatcher on the other end said the man was promising a fight. The dispatcher added with a slight laugh to be cautious.

Seewald, who had been a peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia and a Mountie for more than 25 years before being posted in Cape Dorset six months earlier, replied, “Oh, good. I’ll be right over.”

Half an hour later, the 47-year-old officer affectionately known as Ziggy was dead – his blood spilled on the floor of the couple’s apartment entrance.

During the first week in the murder trial of Salomonie Jaw, a territorial court and jury heard graphic details from 911 recordings, including the voice of Barbara Ettinger, Jaw’s distressed girlfriend who couldn’t get him to leave after threatening that “there would be trouble.”

Ettinger, a former Northern store office manager, took the stand in a makeshift courtroom on Tuesday, almost three years after she held the dying officer’s hand and said she was sorry for what had happened to him.

In the coming weeks, the six-man, six-woman all-Inuit jury is expected to decide whether Jaw, a 49-year-old hunter and former carving packer for the Northern store, is guilty of first-degree murder. After being arrested on the day of the shooting, Jaw pleaded not guilty to the charges.

When called to the stand, Ettinger walked into the community hall where the trial is taking place, past Jaw, holding her head high. A small brass pendant shaped like an ulu hung below her chest as she sat in the witness chair, wearing a black and brown sweater and black jeans.

While Jaw gazed at her occasionally from where he sat with his lawyers, Ettinger told the court about how she was expecting a turbulent weekend because Jaw had run out of hashish and marijuana. She testified that he always became moody when drugs were scarce. During most of Ettinger’s testimony, Jaw watched the court translator, or put on his eyeglasses and took notes. He wore jeans and kamiks like most days, but had changed his Inuksuk T-shirt for one with a Lifesavers logo, with slogans promoting safe sex.

On the night of the shooting, Jaw had been badgering her about her past relationships and insisted on seeing copies of recent e-mails. When he found she had been writing about how living with him was like “living in hell,” arguments erupted, and he heard how she hadn’t told him this because he didn’t want to move elsewhere.

Later when the two were lying down, Jaw wanted Ettinger to undress but she wouldn’t. She tried to leave and he pulled her back onto the bed, yanked off her sweater and tried to take off her shirt. She screamed several times to the neighbours to phone the police.

Jaw then went and got her the phone and said, “If you want the police, you phone them.”

She called, distraught and told a dispatcher in Iqaluit about Jaw’s refusal to leave. When she offered to leave, Jaw told her there would be “trouble” if she did. As heard in court on a grainy phone recording of the call, she compared Jaw’s combative ways to “torture.”

If police came, Jaw was primed for a stand-off, Ettinger said. He told her he wasn’t going to go willingly.

While waiting for the police, she saw Jaw, a member of the local Rangers, check his shotgun and rifle in a closet near the front door to see if they were loaded.

When Const. Seewald knocked on the door shortly after 2 a.m., the officer brushed aside Ettinger’s concerns about the guns. “It’ll be all right,” he told her.

Soon after entering the apartment, Seewald asked Jaw to sit and then forced him into a chair. Once sitting, Jaw noticed his shirt was torn, prompting Ettinger to go into the bedroom to get another.

Less than 10 seconds later, Ettinger returned to the living room to find Seewald pepperspraying Jaw in the face. They wrestled their way to the front door, and the next Ettinger could see, the two men were in a tug-of-war over the shotgun. Jaw had the gun handle; Seewald had the barrel.

A shot was fired, and Jaw looked over the bleeding officer and said, “I shot him.”

Jaw then went directly to the bedroom, knelt at the corner of the bed, and held the gun to his head.

“He said he was going to shoot himself,” Ettinger told the court.

But he didn’t. Instead, he changed into a new shirt, put on his boots, hat and jacket, and walked past the dying police officer with his shotgun in his hand.

Once she finished telling the court Jaw had fled the apartment, promising to kill himself and never come back again, she became red in the face and reached for a tissue.

Then, she told the jury about the officer’s last words to her.

“I took his hand and said, ‘Ziggy, I’m so sorry,” Ettinger recalled.

“He said, ‘It’s not your fault…. I could have handled things differently.”

Besides proving that Jaw knew Seewald was an officer, and that he killed him with intent, Judge John Vertes told the jury the Crown must also prove that Seewald was acting in the course of his duties when the shooting occurred.

The fatal phone call

This is a transcript from a recording played on Feb. 3, after Salamonie Jaw’s ex-girlfriend Barbara Ettinger was called as a witness in Jaw’s first-degree murder trial.

The call took place on March 5, 2001, at 2:05 a.m., between Miranda Harding, an RCMP dispatcher in Iqaluit, and Ettinger.

Harding: Nunavut RCMP.

Ettinger: My name is Barbara. I need help.

Harding: Okay, Barbara. What’s going on?

Ettinger: My partner is, will not leave the premises.

Harding: Okay. What…

Ettinger: And I have asked him to go repeatedly and he is getting…

Jaw: Why.

Ettinger: …dressed because the police…

Jaw: Why.

Ettinger: He is prepared to put up a fight when the police arrive, or so he is telling me.

Harding: Okay, what house number are you are at [sic], are you at?

Ettinger: Northern store house. It’s two-six-five.

Jaw: Ask her why.

Ettinger: Two-six-five?

Jaw: Ask her why.

Ettinger: Pardon me?

Harding: What’s your last name Barbara?

Ettinger: It’s Ettinger. E-T-T-I-N-G-E-R.

Harding: What’s his name?

Ettinger: Salomonie Jaw.

Harding: Salomonie Jaw. Okay, has he been drinking?

Ettinger: No.

Harding: Have you been drinking?

Ettinger: No.

Harding: Okay. Uh, what is the phone number there, Barbara?

Ettinger: Eight-five-one-nine.

Harding: Okay, and, um, why have you asked him to leave the house?

Ettinger: Because we continue to fight and he will not stop and it’s at a point of torture.

Harding: Okay. Any physical fights going on or is it just verbal?

Ettinger: It’s potentially.

Harding: Potentially it’s physical.

Ettinger: Yeah.

Harding: Potentially what?

Ettinger: Physical.

Harding: Okay. And does he live there with you at two-six-five, Barbara?

Ettinger: Yes, he does.

Jaw: (Unintelligible)

Harding: And you’ve asked…

Ettinger: You want to talk to her?

Harding: Barbara?

Ettinger: Yes.

Harding: Okay. And you’ve asked him repeatedly to leave?

Ettinger: Yes I have.

Harding: Okay. Okay Barbara. I’m going to give the on-call member a call, okay?

Ettinger: Thank you.

Harding: Do you guys have any weapons in your house?

Ettinger: Yes.

Harding: Um, what kind of weapons?

Ettinger: There’s firearms and there’s knives.

Harding: What kind of firearms?

Ettinger: We don’t have bombs. Pardon me?

Harding: What kind of firearms?

Jaw: Bombs and bombs and snipers.

Harding: Are they readily accessible, the firearms, Barbara?

Ettinger: They can be.

Harding: Okay.

Jaw: Where’s my smokes?

Harding: Okay, I’m going to get hold of the, the uh, on-call member, okay? And someone should be…

Ettinger: Okay.

Harding: …contacting you very shortly.

Ettinger: Thank you.

Harding: Okay, Barbara?

Ettinger: Yup.

Harding: Okay. Bye-bye.

Ettinger: Bye.