Eyewitness Describes Finding Slain Teen As Murder Trial Continues
Posted March 4, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The man who found Stefanie Rengel bleeding to death in a snowbank took the stand Wednesday and her younger brother followed shortly after.
The 14-year-old was stabbed six times New Year’s Day 2008.
“I just saw her stumbling on the snowbank and she had been stabbed and I did the best I could to help her,” Gavin Shoebottom (pictured below) told reporters afterward.
In court, he told the jury that Rengel told him that she had been stabbed.
“It hurts so much, it hurts so much,” he describes her as saying.
Shoebottom then called 911 and the operator asked him to ask her, “Who did this to you?”
Rengel allegedly gave the first name of her assailant, but had trouble speaking and could not say his entire last name.
Shoebottom then got a blanket from his car and covered the girl. He stayed with her until paramedics arrived. By then, she had lost consciousness. Rengel had no vital signs when emergency crews arrived and died later in hospital.
Later, Ian Rengel faced the jury.
He said Stefanie was at home with him and two of their brothers when she got a call on her cell phone.
Stefanie told him she would be right back and then left the house.
Ian, now 13, watched her leave and kept an eye on his sister as she made her way down the street. It was the last time he saw her alive.
For the first time Wednesday, evidence presented to the jury was also captured by reporters. The shirt Rengel was wearing when she died was displayed, as was the alleged murder weapon: a kitchen knife.
The trial for a 17-year-old girl known only as MT will resume Friday. She has been charged with first-degree murder in the brutal death, but MT is not accused of holding the knife.
Instead, the Crown alleged Wednesday that jealousy and her obsession with the victim led MT to encourage her boyfriend to kill the other teen.
The boyfriend, now 19, will go on trial for first-degree murder in October. They cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
