Through tears, a Sooke woman described to a B.C. Supreme Court jury how she prayed over her husband after he had been shot, as a police officer rushed him to an ambulance near their home.
“Just stay with me, babe. Just stay with me,” Wendy Nelson recalled saying to her husband, 55-year-old Anthony Nelson, as they headed to waiting paramedics.
Wendy Nelson was testifying Wednesday at the trial of her neighbour, Paul Tregear, who is facing charges of aggravated assault, discharging a firearm with intent to wound, maim or disfigure, possessing a firearm without a licence and pointing a firearm at a person in connection with a May 7, 2022, incident on the Nelson property.
Wendy Nelson recalled hearing her husband yell at someone, asking what they were doing on his property and why they had a gun. She was on the phone with 911 as she stepped out of her house to see a struggle between her husband and a man with a rifle, she testified.
She heard the rifle go off “very loud,” she said.
While her husband struggled to wrestle the rifle away, she yelled at him to “pound him,” she said.
“I think my husband is about to lose his life, so I want him to kick the sh— out of this guy,” Wendy Nelson testified.
Once her husband took charge of the gun and collapsed near their front steps, Wendy Nelson lifted up his shirt and saw a bullet hole in his abdomen with charred skin around it. There was no exit wound on his back, she said.
“I knew it was bad then,” she testified.
Crown prosecutor Sofia Green has suggested Tregear shot Anthony Nelson over conflicts between the two families.
Anthony and Wendy Nelson built their house on a 2.5-acre property in a rural area of Sooke and have lived there since 2001, Anthony Nelson testified Tuesday.
He said Tregear has lived next door for about 15 years and their relationship was initially friendly, but deteriorated over the years.
Sometime in 2020, police came to the Nelsons’ house in response to a complaint from Tregear’s partner, Cindy Hehn, that Anthony Nelson was trying to hit her on the road, he testified Tuesday.
He said for a period of several months, while driving to work around 6 a.m., he would see Hehn walking her dog on Otter Point Road a few times a week. She would walk in the middle of the rural, winding road in the dark, he said.
“I had the police show up at my residence and tell me I was trying to run her down, her and her dog,” he said.
The officer asked him to take a different route, but he refused because it would take longer, Anthony Nelson said.
In early 2021, Anthony Nelson received a phone call from Tregear, who accused him of stealing his wood and moving the property line, Anthony Nelson testified. Tregear also accused Nelson’s brother-in-law of trying to hit Hehn, he said.
Anthony Nelson said he eventually hung up on Tregear, who called back.
“I told him not to phone here ever again,” he said.
Anthony Nelson said he had never had an unfriendly interaction with Tregear before the phone call.
“It changed just because of his association with [Hehn],” he said.
The trial continues Thursday.
