The widow of a man allegedly beaten to death with a shovel by his nephew in Ashcroft last summer told a B.C. Supreme Court judge yesterday a tragic story of being run out of her own life.
From the prisoner’s box in a Kamloops courtroom, Shane Gyoba repeatedly interrupted his aunt, Barb Gyoba, as she testified at his second-degree murder trial.
Shane Gyoba stands accused of beating to death his uncle, Ed Gyoba, on June 2, 2014.
On Tuesday, neighbour Gil Anderson testified he saw Shane and Ed Gyoba involved in a fight on their front lawn that morning.
After Shane Gyoba knocked his uncle down, Anderson said, he picked up a shovel and delivered three blows.
Anderson called police and Shane Gyoba was arrested minutes later. He has been in custody ever since.
Barb Gyoba, who married Ed in 1993, said Shane’s father died before he was a teenager. When Shane was 14, he moved from Saskatoon to Ashcroft to live with Barb and Ed, court heard.
Barb said Shane had been in trouble with the law in Saskatoon after being caught tagging a fence. He was on probation when he moved to Ashcroft.
At that point in her testimony, Shane interrupted his aunt, saying, “Don’t confuse me and Ed. Don’t confuse myself as your son.”
Each time she was interrupted, Barb held her hand up to block her nephew from her view. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Dev Dley eventually told Shane to “remain quiet,” but the interruptions continued.
Barb described Shane as a happy kid who was eager to please. But, she said, as he went through high school, things changed.
“He became more dominant in school,” she said. “He was the boss. He had friends — a gang of friends — but he was the boss of the school. One of the teachers let him teach the class.
“He was very domineering.”
Barb said Shane’s aggressive personality took a toll on her, eventually leading to a nervous breakdown.
“It was nerve-wracking because my husband protected me from him,” she said.
“Shane decided at some point that I couldn’t be intimidated. He could control my husband, but he couldn’t me.”
That conflict led to Barb moving out of the family home and into a nearby townhouse she had been using for a small business.
But, she said, Ed remained in the house with Shane. Court heard the pair spent a lot of time in a shop on the property.
“They would sit on either side of a wood stove in reclining chairs and Shane would talk and Eddy would listen — for hours, days,” she said.
Ed eventually moved his business to Lillooet, leaving Shane alone in the house, but would make frequent trips back to Ashcroft for work and to do odd jobs at home.
Weeks before he was killed, court heard, Ed had become fed up with Shane and wanted him out of the house.
“Eddy came over and he had a hammer out and he said, ‘This is it, he’s got to get out,’” Barb testified.
“He was very upset. Very upset.
“Shane said, ‘It’s my house. Why would I move out?’ But, Ed owned the house.”
The day her husband died, Barb said, he had gone to the house to work on the underground sprinkler system. Barb said Ed left her townhouse at about 8 a.m., when she set off for Kamloops to pick up a pair of his glasses.
“I said, ‘I’ll be back right away and we can have lunch and then you can go home,’” she said.
“When I got back, the crime-scene tape was up. That was around 12:30.
“The sergeant came over, he saw me there, and he said, ‘We talked about this, didn’t we?’
“We did talk about it, a year ago, about Shane doing something,” Barb said.
Shane Gyoba’s trial is expected to wrap up next week.
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