A witness's temper flared during cross examination Monday at the trial for Cody Allan Legebokoff, accused of murdering a teenage girl and three women.
Sheriffs took Jackie Willard into cells after she refused to provide any further testimony when defence lawyer Jim Heller pressed her over whether she had ripped off Legebokoff for the $300 he had given her one night to buy him some crack cocaine.
When Heller accused her of taking Legebokoff's money and waiting him out until he had left a meeting point where she was supposed to come back with the crack, Willard became confrontational.
"It's about killing people, not about ripping people off, right?" Willard replied. "That's besides the point."
When Heller went on to suggest she had lied to police, Willard stormed out of the witness box and when sheriffs returned her, she turned the microphone away and said she was not going to answer any more questions.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett then ordered sheriffs to put Willard in cells.
In earlier testimony, the court heard that Jill Stacey Stuchenko was taking tentative steps towards getting herself off crack cocaine and out of the street life just prior to her disappearance in October 2009.
Les McDermid, a friend of Stuchenko's who had let her stay at his home, testified that in the days just prior to the 2009 Thanksgiving long weekend, he had twice driven her to the Nechako clinic, a rehab centre on Alward.
However, Stuchenko was gone for almost the entire weekend, leaving the home on the Saturday afternoon. And when she returned a couple days later, she looked haggard and appeared to have been partying, McDermid said.
He tried to talk her into staying long enough for her to have something to eat but she was in too much of a rush. She grabbed a couple of papers and headed back out the door. McDermid said he thought it was something to do with her children.
"She wanted to get off [crack]," McDermid said. "That's why she was getting into the program.
"She had stopped before because they were talking about adopting her children and she wanted her kids back. She was serious about getting them."
Stuchenko's body was found in a shallow grave at a gravel pit off Otway Road on Oct. 20, 2009.
