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The Crown does not expect jurors in a Regina murder trial to hear any witness say they saw the man accused stab Misha Pavelick.

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Yet at the outset of the trial Monday, prosecutor Adam Breker said he’s confident jurors will find the accused man both killed and intended to kill the 19-year-old near Regina Beach on the May long weekend in 2006.

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Because the accused man was a youth at the time of the alleged offence, a publication ban under the Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibits disclosure of any information that would identify him.

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Before the jury was selected Monday morning, he pleaded not guilty to a charge that he committed second-degree murder on or about May 21, 2006. He was 34 years old in the summer of 2023 when the charge was first announced.

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“We expect the evidence will convince you that he’s the only one that checks all the boxes,” Breker told jurors, during his opening statement in Regina’s Court of King’s Bench.

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The trial, expected to run for four weeks, features a lengthy list of potential Crown witnesses. The prosecutor’s statement is not evidence but provided jurors with an outline of what the Crown anticipates these witnesses will say in testimony.

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Breker told jurors they can expect to hear about a large annual party in the Kinookimaw campground near Regina Beach, organized by students at Regina’s Miller Comprehensive High School.

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Pavelick, the prosecutor said, was among those in attendance.

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He said jurors can also expect to hear others in attendance included the accused man, as well as Pavelick’s ex-girlfriend and her then new boyfriend.

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“We think the evidence will establish it was fraught in the way that things are sometimes fraught and tense between two teenage boys who dated the same girl,” Breker said.

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“A fight between those two boys, those two guys, seemed to be expected.”

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And indeed fighting broke out.

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Breker said jurors can expect to hear Pavelick struck the new boyfriend with a beer bottle, setting off the first of two bouts of violence.

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“We don’t expect you’re going to hear any two people describe that night in exactly the same way — not surprising. You’re going to hear about a dark, chaotic scene, the only real light source being from a fire.”

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But the prosecutor told jurors they can expect to hear, among other things, evidence about the accused man being armed with a knife, being an active participant in assaulting Pavelick, saying he’d stabbed someone, and accusing another man of the killing.