An eight-year-old girl told police she witnessed Gabriel Joseph Faucher punch her mother five times during a fight, just days before she died in a Saskatoon hospital.
Faucher had come into the room and said, “Give me your best shot,” the girl said in her police statement, taken on Jan. 24, 2016 — the day 36-year-old Beverly Littlecrow died.
Faucher, 45, was arrested on Feb. 2, 2016 and initially charged with second-degree murder. On Monday, he pleaded not guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter.
The girl’s video recorded police interview was admitted as evidence after a day-long voir dire at Faucher’s trial in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench. He is accused of contributing to Littlecrow’s death while they lived together in Kinley, Sask.
The victim’s daughter initially told police she saw her mom hit her head on a dresser during the fight with Faucher. She said her mom had a bruised eye and arm the next day.
However, in a second interview taken almost a month later, she said her mom could have hit her eye on a pole outside. Later in that same interview, the girl said Faucher was lying when he told people that her mom fell and hit her eye on a pole the day before the alleged beating.
Doctors said her mom had a previous brain injury that affected her balance, the girl told the officer.
Lawyers are expected to question the now 11-year-old girl when the trial proper begins today.