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WARNING

Robert Bruce Caldwell, 45, died of multiple stab wounds on February 23rd, 2007.

Caldwell was Edmonton's seventh homicide victim of the year.

Brendan Lee Jeffery, 27, was charged with second-degree murder and possession of a dangerous weapon.

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Edmonton's seventh homicide of 2007, the third in a week, took place in broad daylight at the height of the morning rush hour in the middle of downtown.

Sections of Jasper Avenue were blocked off on the morning of February 23rd, 2007 as motorists had to navigate their way around the city's latest murder scene.

According to witnesses, two men got on board the Route 5 Edmonton Transit bus at Commerce Place, near 101st Street, shortly before 7 a.m. An altercation broke out between the two with one accusing the other of giving him a cold.

The driver, sensing an escalation in the argument, pushed the vehicle's panic button and pulled to a stop at 107th Street.

When the two men got off the westbound bus one was stabbed, collapsing on the sidewalk on the northeast corner of 107th and Jasper. He was later pronounced dead at the scene.

A male suspect walked away eastbound but was soon apprehended on the north side of Jasper Avenue near 104th Street as he was heading underground to the LRT system at Bay station.

"Officers had spotted him when he was still on ground level," a police spokesman said. "He went partially down the stairwell," before he was taken into custody.

Police said the two men knew each other and a knife was recovered.

Police shut down Jasper Avenue to one lane westbound as they investigated. The man's body, covered by a light cream-coloured blanket – and still bleeding – remained on the sidewalk for several hours.

As the police forensics unit were still dealing with the scene where David Wong was murdered two days before, it took nearly five hours before a portable tent was set over the body.

27-year-old Brendan Lee Jeffery was charged with second-degree murder and possession of a dangerous weapon. He was scheduled to appear in court March 12th or 14th, 2007 [media gave conflicting reports].

On February 26th police announced that an autopsy revealed the 45-year-old victim died of multiple stab wounds.

Two days later, the deceased was identified as Robert Bruce Caldwell of no fixed address.

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Robert Bruce Caldwell - Edmonton Sun image

Robert Bruce Caldwell moved to Edmonton in the fall of 2006 from his home in New Westminster, British Columbia. He had come to Alberta looking for work.

The Edmonton Sun spoke to his sister, Colleen McKenna.

"He was a warehouse worker," McKenna said. "A really hard worker. There just wasn't that much work [in B.C.] And everyone thinks you make big bucks in Edmonton, that there's work all over the place."

Caldwell had difficulty finding a good-paying job, and had frequently registered at the Herb Jamieson Centre. He had been staying at the Hope Mission emergency and detox centres while doing temp work.

He moved to Edmonton to get back on his feet and renew relations with his young daughters.

Caldwell's wife left him in 2003, and he last spoke to his daughters, aged six and eight and living with their mother in Calgary, before he moved to Edmonton. He was hoping the move to Alberta would provide a more regular relationship with the girls.

"Definitely. That was the whole thing," said McKenna. "His kids were everything to him. He was a very loving father and a very caring person to people."

She told the Sun she took comfort in knowing her brother didn't die alone but was struggling to understand the senselessness of her brother's murder.

"You expect [such attacks] in a dark alley, but not in front of a bunch of people in the street," she said.

Caldwell's parents live in Surrey, British Columbia and that's where he'll be buried, McKenna said.

Although police said Caldwell and his attacker knew each other, it was never made clear what their relationship was.

As the incident happened at the height of the morning rush hour, homicide detectives were able to interview numerous witnesses.

A woman interviewed by the Edmonton Journal described one of the two men as being in his 40s, wearing a denim jacket and jeans. She said he had a chipped tooth and looked like he was headed to work.

He asked the other man for pills, saying, "I'm sure it was you that gave me this cold."

The witness said the other man, who was wearing all black, "flipped out."

"Keep it up," he said. "Keep bugging me, and you're going to get stabbed."

The woman got off the trolley bus at 105th Street. A block later, she noticed the bus had stopped again.

She saw the man wearing the jean jacket being slammed down onto the sidewalk. She pushed forward, making her way through other people who had gotten off the bus.

The man wearing black walked past her in a nonchalant manner.

When she reached the sidewalk in front of a parking lot and the Boston Pizza, the victim was still alive.

He had fallen over and his eyes were wide open. As bystanders told him he would be okay, a pool of blood collected under him.

Emergency medical staff declared him dead at the scene.

"I don't think there was anything anyone could have done," the woman said, adding the whole thing happened in less than five minutes over the course of a few blocks.

"He was just trying to get to work. He didn't do anything to bring this on."

The Edmonton Sun located a witness who had so much to say her story was published over two separate editions.

Cynthia Gallinger, 45, told the Sun the two men boarded the at the same stop and seemed to know each other. She said they casually sat a few rows apart in the front half of the bus.

"He [the victim] said, 'You got any of those [cold] pills? Gimme one of those pills because you gave me this cold," she recalled.

The man spoke in a loud voice and everybody on the bus – more than 15 people – likely heard him.

The other man refused, saying "Fuck you. Go fuck yourself. Keep bugging me and you're going to get stabbed, buddy."

Gallinger said the bus driver calmly warned the two not to start anything. The victim addressed the bus driver as "sir" and pleaded that he wasn't trying to start anything.

However, the other man didn't see it that way.

"He said [to the victim], 'Yeah, that's it, you're getting stabbed. You're not making it to work today.' " Gallinger added, "He was clearly threatening him."

Gallinger was annoyed and loudly told the bus driver that she wanted to get off at the next stop. She scolded the bus driver for not doing more to quell the "unacceptable behaviour." She told the Sun she later regretted the remark.

Gallinger got off at 105th Street and walked west on Jasper toward her workplace. She caught up with the slow-moving trolley bus as it pulled over at a stop just east of 107th Street.

Gallinger said she saw the two men "fly off the bus" and watched in horror as one of the men attacked the other.

It was a one-sided confrontation. "I could just see this arm over and over again. ... That poor guy," Gallinger said.

"I don't think the guy had even an opportunity to defend himself."

Gallinger said she passed the attacker who "sauntered" east along Jasper Avenue. "I'm thinking, 'You son of a bitch.' "

She continued toward the victim. "He was hunched over and he kept trying to pull his duffel bag toward him. He was looking at me and he couldn't talk.

"There was blood pooling under him – a big pool of blood. He was just a guy trying to get to work with a cold," Gallinger said. "It just sucks."

She said neither the bus driver nor the other passengers could have done anything to stop the assault.

"I don't think anyone could've stopped it. That's why I got off the bus. I knew when I got off the bus it was going to be bad. You could feel it."

Gallinger called the suspect a "bonehead" and a "drain on society," and said she told the Sun the charge should have been first-degree murder.

"He threatened him. He told him that he's not making it to work. He said he was going to stab him and that's exactly what he did."

Another witness told police that another passenger had unsuccessfully attempted to halt the attack. That person had grabbed at one of the men, telling him "it wasn’t worth it."

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The fatal attack came almost a year after Edmonton Transit had recorded its first on-system murder.

On March 2nd, 2006 Stefan William Conley was swarmed by four youth as he rode a bus on a route in south Edmonton.

This latest attack put the issue of transit safety in the spotlight once again.

Mike Derbyshire, director of Edmonton Transit safety and security and a former city police officer, said the bus driver followed procedure which led to help arriving so quickly.

Police were alerted when the driver, who has been with Transit for just four months, pressed a panic button.

"Our operator witnessed the entire occurrence and is currently receiving peer support and counselling," Derbyshire said.

"The driver recognized that a circumstance was unfolding on his bus. He understood that those kinds of things tend to lead to other things, and he took the appropriate action by immediately calling our control centre.

"Our operator did everything perfectly."

On a typical weekday, there are about 600 buses and 30 LRT cars serving about 130,000 passengers, he said. During that time in the morning rush – a relatively safe period, there are 32 special constables patrolling the system.

"We are very cognizant of emerging trends. We're a big city now, [with] 60 million rides a year. These things do happen," Derbyshire said. "Frankly, it's a senseless act [in this case] committed by a senseless person. It is somewhat random."

A downtown bus headed down Jasper Avenue before morning rush hour is not typically a scene of violence, he said.

"Our security resources are deployed to those times and locations within Edmonton where we have a reasonable likelihood of some type of crime or disorder occurring," Derbyshire said.

"Obviously at 7 o'clock on a Friday morning, in downtown Edmonton, we had no intelligence that any conditions are ripe for any kind of crime or disorder activities.

"In perspective, we did 60 million rides last year in Edmonton on bus and LRT. We had less than 200 incidents of assault or confrontation.

"Edmonton Transit is still a very, very, very safe way of getting from point A to point B.

"You have a far better chance of winning the lottery than you do being involved in a situation like this on a bus or on a train," Derbyshire said.

Based on his figures, transit riders have one chance in 300,000 of being a victim of violence.

Ron Gabruck, the system's security operations co-ordinator, said the men "willingly exited the bus on their own accord" after the driver told them to settle down.

"We are totally satisfied that the security measures we have in place are adequate and would not have prevented this," Gabruck told the Sun.

Gabruck called the homicide an unavoidable random act of violence.

"No matter what we did, we could never predict something like this," he said.

The Conley incident sparked an infusion of government funding for improved transit security.

Some of the $2.25 million in funding announced in the fall of 2006 was earmarked for measures such as security cameras, improved lighting and computer upgrades.

There are 800 buses in the city's fleet, and 230 of those buses will be outfitted with security camera systems over the next 18 months. The cost of equipping a single bus with cameras is as much as $12,000. Transit officials said all new buses will be outfitted with cameras.

"Each of those new buses as they are equipped and delivered to Edmonton will be equipped with 5-camera systems in the bus," Derbyshire said.

It was conceded the cameras won't prevent acts of violence but would serve as a deterrent and aid in neeed investigations.

The Edmonton Sun posed an online poll to measure public perception of transit safety.

The one-day voluntary poll allowed only one response per computer.

For more about Edmonton Transit reaction to the March 2006 attack, visit the Stefan William Conley page.

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The broad daylight slaying in downtown Edmonton again invited the question "Why?"

As if answering a witness' question, University of Alberta criminologist Bill Pitt said the spur-of-the-moment verbal sparring cannot be considered a premeditated act.

But Pitt said the city's seventh homicide in eight weeks did little to improve citizens' perception of safety.

"Edmontonians aren't used to stepping over corpses in the morning," he told the Sun.

Pitt warned that there was a cloud over the capital city, and he said all the factors are in place for another deadly year.

He cited an increasing number of newcomers, an abundance of narcotics, continued gang activity and a willingness by many to resort to violence.

"It all adds up to one ugly little situation," Pitt predicted. The criminologist also defined his perception of the situation for Global Edmonton.

"It is a big city. It's a growing city. It's a city in transition and it's going to be in further transition for the next few years," Pitt said.

"That's why I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going to happen to our violent crime rate, what's going to happen to our homicide rate, what's going to happen to the amount of drug interdictions that are going to occur in our city.

"This is a city that is a great place to be a criminal in."

However, Edmonton criminologist Kevin Haggerty told the Journal a rapidly growing list of homicides should not be used as an indicator of public safety.

Haggerty is an associate professor and director of the University of Alberta Criminology program.

"The problem with trying to evaluate the safety of a city through homicide rates is, in most cases, homicides are done by people (who know) one another," Haggerty said. "It's not a very good bellwether."

Within a week, Edmonton saw three slayings, bringing the number of homicides in 2007 up to seven, compared to five at this time last year and equaling seven in 2005.

On February 16th Chancely Devlin Simpson was found unconscious in a basement suite and died later in hospital.

On February 21st police found David Wong being dismembered in a downtown apartment building.

Two days later, an argument aboard a bus ended with one man stabbed and bleeding to death on a downtown sidewalk.

"What connects the dismembering of a corpse to a fight on a bus? It's hard to generalise," Haggerty said.

But typically, he said, homicide victims – and accused killers – are men in their 20s or early 30s already involved in some criminal activity, such as gangs or the drug trade.

Edmonton saw record numbers of homicides in the past three years (36 cases in 2006, 39 in 2005 and 28 in 2004). Statstics Canada has dubbed the city the murder capital in Canada.

Haggerty said the rate remains low compared to cities in the United States and other industrialised countries. "Statistically we're not dealing with very high numbers."

Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel said the city and police service are doing their best to curb violence.

"It's hard to begin to comment on it when people's lives are changed or destroyed," Mandel said

"Wherever it happens it happens – it happens on a street or it happens on a bus, it doesn't negate the sadness of it and or increase the impact of these horrible events.

"We do everything we can in security to make sure people are safe and we'll continue to do that. Sometimes those things happen ... there's nothing you can do about it – it's just an event."

In a separate interview, the mayor revisited his frustration with current laws.

"I would also like to see us get a little more stringent on punishment for those carrying knives – you should ban the darn things."

Asked about city's current record of a murder nearly every week Mandel said, "That's a societal issue that's not going to be corrected overnight and we have to work on that."

He was referring to the recent Enough Is Enough anti-violence campaign, and said it would be unrealistic to expect violence to end immediately.

"The region [has] over a million people, so those challenges are growing and growing," he said.

Police chief Mike Boyd said he had reviewed recent homicide cases and noted that almost all involve people who knew each other.

"And I think that's one of the things that Edmontonians are concerned about. They're concerned about whether or not they can walk around in their city – go to different places – without being victims of homicide.

"And so it's important for me to tell you that these cases, for the most part, involve disputes.

"There seems to be a common dominator here – a lack of respect for human life, an anger management problem. Alcohol is often involved in some of these disputes.

"These are not about stranger on stranger," he said adding, "They are definitely not random acts of violence."

Boyd noted none of the killings so far in 2007 involved young people.

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The Edmonton Sun contacted Steve Conley, Stefan's father, at his Apsley, Ontario home.

"My goodness. This is just terrible," he told the Sun. "It's the same thing all over again. Nothing has changed a year later.

"It makes you wonder, should we have all ex-military or ex-police driving buses these days? I would be somewhat nervous riding the Transit system in Edmonton. This is too much.

"A year later, the wounds are just as fresh," Conley said. "Nothing seems to have changed out there yet."

Conley said Edmonton Transit needs to do more to ensure safety in and around its buses and LRT cars.

He said video cameras may force some passengers to think twice about resorting to violence.

"I'm beginning to think they are a useful tool that should be used. The security of people in Edmonton right now is pretty bad.

"[Cameras and witnesses] are not a deterrent for everybody," Conley acknowledged.

For more about his son's death, visit the Stefan William Conley page.

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After a preliminary hearing held in September 2007 determined there was enough evidence to proceed, the second-degree murder judge-only trial against Brendan Lee Jeffery began on October 8th, 2008 before Court of Queen's Bench Justice Sterling Sanderman. Jeffery also faced a charge of possession of a dangerous weapon.

Handling the case for the Crown was prosecutor Wade Marke, while Robert Shaigec was acting for the defence.

The trial began with Jeffery's not guilty plea on the record.

In the gallery sat two sisters of Caldwell. They held hands as Jeffery, dressed in his blue remand centre jumpsuit, was walked into the courtroom between two sheriffs.

After opening statements were presented, the Crown started its parade of witnesses to set the February 2007 scene on Jasper Avenue and 107th Street.

Soon after police arrived, a foot chase led two Edmonton police officers to the Bay LRT Station stairwell on the north side of Jasper Avenue near 104th Street.

Const. Darryl McDonald caught up to a suspect halfway down the stairs and drew his gun. The man stopped, turned around slowly, and dropped a knife from his right hand.

Without emotion or resistance, Jeffery allowed himself be handcuffed and checked for weapons.

"When you're on the streets, you have to deal with shit when it comes," he told Const. Jason Kemp. "That guy was one fucking mouthpiece."

McDonald told the court that Jeffery was first charged with aggravated assault.

When he told him the charges would be upgraded to homicide, Jeffery showed no emotion but asked to speak to a lawyer.

"Good, I get to see my brother," Jeffery said to the officer. McDonald recorded the odd response in his notebook.

Later the accused asked another officer, "He died right there?" But he sounded more curious than concerned, McDonald testified.

Edmonton Transit driver Lee Turcotte told the court he was driving west on Jasper Avenue and was approaching the stop at 106th Street when he heard two men arguing.

"You know, you gave me the flu," Turcotte heard Robert Caldwell saying.

Caldwell was sitting near the front of the bus; Jeffery sat near the back. One older-looking woman told the men to keep their voices down.

Turcotte raised his voice and warned the men to stop or they would be kicked off the crowded bus.

But Jeffery seemed angered by the admonishments.

"Shut up," he yelled. Then he shouted back to Caldwell, "You're not going to show up to work today. You want the knife?"

Turcotte said Caldwell went quiet, got up and apologised to him at the front of the bus and disembarked at 107th Street.

The driver testified Jeffery then jumped off the bus through the back door. He said the two walked towards each other and Caldwell was attacked.

"(Caldwell) put his hands up and the accused started hitting him," Turcotte said, adding he could see them over his right shoulder when he called police.

"He was not swinging back; he had his hands up – that's all."

He said he saw Jeffery hit Caldwell seven or eight times, and saw a knife in his hand.

Turcotte told police after the incident that he couldn't hear everything that was said but saw Jeffery becoming increasingly enraged.

"You could just see him burning up."

An inmate caught a bit of a break from his stay at the Edmonton Remand Centre when he was asked to testify at the trial.

On the stand he said Jeffery told him he stabbed a man because he called him a goof.

The Crown played a video statement from Jeffery in which the accused said he and Caldwell knew each other from a temporary job-placement agency.

Court then heard from two female passengers, including one who tried to stop the fight between Caldwell and Jeffery.

Amber Hansen testified she first noticed the men when they began arguing loudly.

She told them, "Come on, you guys, we all got to catch this bus. We don't need to hear this."

When the bus stopped near 107th Street and Jasper Avenue, she noticed Caldwell said something to the bus driver before he stepped off.

Hansen then saw Jeffery jump out the back door. He went toward Caldwell and started punching him – at least that's what it looked like to Hansen.

The 5-foot 6-inch, 28-year-old woman – small but wiry – tried to step in between the two men. Then she saw the glint of a knife.

"Obviously it was not punching," Hansen noted.

As she tried to pull the six-foot tall Jeffery off Caldwell, she was joined in her efforts by another passenger.

When the man tried to aid the bleeding Caldwell, Jeffery started to go after him as well, Hansen said.

"I just kept getting in his way, tried to keep him away from everyone," she told the court.

"I was screaming and yelling and getting in his face. He just walked away."

Cynthia Gallinger had gotten off the westbound Number 5 bus one stop earlier. She was walking along side it and was half a block away when she saw an altercation take place.

Gallinger told the court she ran over to Caldwell and said, "Just hang on, hang on. The ambulance is coming."

Caldwell fell forward, struggling the woman said, as if trying to get his small duffel bag underneath him.

"Then his face fell into the ground and that was it."

Police arrived and Gallinger tried to help out by collecting phone numbers from other bus passengers so that they could be contacted later as witnesses.

"Then I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I left and went to work. The police contacted me later that morning."

Officers quickly caught up with Jeffery as he was making his way into the Bay LRT station. Caldwell died on the scene.

Outside the court, Amber Hansen explained to reporters why she got involved.

"Didn't think it was a fair fight," she said.

Amber's father, Wayne Hansen, had come to court to support his daughter.

"Brave thing or stupid, we're not sure," he said.

"I've got more guts than brains," Amber said, grinning.

With Crown testimony complete, the defence was expected to call an expert medical witness to the stand when the trial resumes.

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deadmonton 2007 - robert bruce caldwell