Man charged in slaying of store clerk in Montreal was rebuffed by victim: Crown

MONTREAL — Less than a week after being rebuffed by a girl he’d asked out, the man on trial in her slaying returned to a Montreal big box store and fatally stabbed her 14 times in April 2016, the Crown argued Friday.

Randy Tshilumba stabbed Clemence Beaulieu-Patry in the neck, back and stomach with a hunting knife he’d brought into the Maxi store with him, prosecutor Catherine Perreault told jurors at the accused’s first-degree murder trial.

He then hid out for hours inside the women’s washroom at a nearby Tim Hortons, she said.

Perreault added in her opening statement that evidence suggests Tshilumba and Beaulieu-Patry attended high school together for four years but didn’t know each other well.

The Crown said Tshilumba went to the store three times in the weeks leading up to the slaying and on one occasion spoke to the victim, asked her out, sought her phone number and requested she add him to Facebook.

She refused, according to Perreault, and less than a week later, on April 10, 2016, was attacked inside her east-end Montreal workplace.

Perreault said she’ll demonstrate that Tshilumba, who is now 21, only emerged from the coffee shop toilet early the next day, using public transit to get to a junior college he attended and hiding the clothes and weapon in his locker.

She told the jury of seven men and five women that Tshilumba spent the day texting friends and searching the web about the slaying, cleaning blood stains, disposing of weapons, getting rid of evidence and trying to commit the “perfect murder.”

Beaulieu-Patry, 20, was supposed to have already finished her shift, but had agreed to stay an extra hour.

“It was just an hour more, but for Clemence, it was an hour too much,” Perreault said.

Dozens of customers and employees were still on the premises at the time, including Pascale Nadege-Joseph, who was shopping with her four-year-old daughter.

They entered the clothing area of the store and Nadege-Joseph thought at first what she was seeing was a bickering young couple.

She told the jury that Beaulieu-Patry was struggling as the suspect had his arms around her neck. She saw the man’s arm come up and the reflection of what appeared to be a machete-like blade.

Nadege-Joseph testified she screamed: “he’s killing her,” all the while trying to shield her child from seeing the attack.

An emotional Nadege-Joseph testified she could remember two distinct sounds from that night: a suction noise of steel striking flesh and Beaulieu-Patry gasping what the witness described as her last breath as the weapon left her body .

Nadege-Joseph’s husband, Jean-William Lahens, said he arrived after hearing his wife’s screams and cried out: “hey sicko! What are you doing!,”and chased the suspect, who managed to escape.

He said he returned to the scene and got down on his knees, held Beaulieu-Patry’s hand and head, imploring her to stay with them.

Earlier, two of Beaulieu-Patry’s best friends testified she and the accused weren’t friends. One of them recounted meeting him two weeks before the attack at her own workplace, and said Tshilumba was sweating and appeared stressed.

The Quebec Superior Court trial presided by Justice Helene Di Salvo is expected to last five weeks.

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Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press