Several RCMP officers, including Sgt. Eric Lane, went to the Hay River home of Levi Cayen to arrest him in January 2018.
Cayen took off on foot, leading the officers down a snowmobile trail for a few hundred metres.
The officers caught up with Cayen and apprehended him. He’s now being tried on first-degree murder in the death of Alex Norwegian, 25.
Norwegian was found bloodied and frozen in his car in late December 2017 near Hay River.
The court heard an audio recording shortly after Cayen’s arrest where the accused admitted to being scared and requesting a lawyer.
While testifying on Feb. 23, Lane, former head of the RCMP Major Crimes Unit for G Division, said he stepped out of the interview room and made numerous calls to locate an available lawyer for Cayen.
A video played for the court showed that in Lane’s absence, Cayen grabbed a Bible from the desk and thumbed through it anxiously for half an hour, at times reading passages aloud.
Cayen spoke with a lawyer, then refused to be interviewed further by police. He spent the night in custody.
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The next day, RCMP officers interviewed Cayen for five hours.
Lane testified the circumstances that solidified Cayen as a suspect.
A friend of Cayen’s, co-accused James Thomas’s girlfriend, called Lane and implicated Cayen and Thomas in Norwegian’s death.
Thomas was arrested first. Police caught up wish Cayen two days later.
Cayen’s trial is expected to last another four weeks.