Widow testifies to shock, fear after husband’s fatal shooting

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St. THOMAS – The terrible, decade-old memories appeared to be as fresh to Eva Willer Frigo as the day she saw her husband shot to death.

“There was a shot,” she said, and paused. “And Don was on the ground.”

The 56-year-old widow of Caledon businessperson Donato Frigo began her testimony Monday at the Superior Court re-trial Boris Panovski, 80, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and not guilty to attempted murder for the shooting at the Hullett provincial wildlife area in Huron County on Sept. 13, 2014.

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Willer Frigo, who was wounded in the shooting, was the only eyewitness to what happened when she and Frigo, 70, were out running his field dog, named Ben, after the annual field dog trials at the conservation area were long finished.

It was clear the events have deeply scarred her. With her during her testimony was her service dog, Remy, an 11-year-old Dutch shepherd, who has been her companion and support since the shooting.

The Crown is arguing Panovski, a former high-flying field dog trainer and breeder, had a long-standing grudge against Frigo, who bought a champion dog from Panovski – originally named Panovski Silver – before 2005.

Frigo changed the dog’s name to Belfield Silver and the dog went on to be a champion.

Panovski had one jury trial in Goderich 2018, appealed the decision in 2021 and the new trial was ordered to be held in St. Thomas last summer. Justice Marc Garson is hearing the case without a jury.

Willer Frigo has been the most-anticipated witness at the trial. She described how she and her husband were at Hullett a couple days before the trials, and stayed after they were over to train their two dogs, Joe and Ben.

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They were both on horseback while training Ben, with Frigo riding ahead of her, and were on their way back to the staging area where they had their trailers. Willer Frigo said she saw a car with square lights and heavily tinted windows back into a spot in the parking lot. She said she could only see the side of the car.

She thought she could see a sunset-coloured pamphlet on the dashboard.

They were about to turn left back to the trailers, when the first shot was fired. “Oh yeah, I heard the shot,” she said under questioning by assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown. “It was loud.”

She didn’t know where the shot had come from, but she heard her husband say “My head, my head.”

Then came a second shot and “I felt a sting on my face.”

She sensed where the shot had originated and swung her horse around. She saw a man in the bush. “He was running toward the car and I was running to get away.”

She saw his side profile. He was wearing a ball cap and camouflage clothing. ”He had a shotgun,” she said. “From what I could see it was the same colour as the clothes.”

She said the man had a brush cut and she could see a hint of grey in his sideburns. And, she said, he was fit. She said she told the police she thought he was in his forties.

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Brown asked her to described her emotional state at that moment. “Obviously, I was scared, pissed off, helpless,” she said, then paused and closed her eyes.

Willer Frigo said she didn’t want to leave her husband. She rode onto a knoll and up a hill and decided she needed to get the licence information of the car.

She saw the car was leaving and she couldn’t get the licence plate. Her husband was on the ground at the side of the road.

She said she watched helplessly as the car pulled out and stopped beside her husband. A gun came out through the passenger window and her husband was shot again.

“The car leaves and then I go to Don,” she said. He wasn’t moving.

In shock, she managed to grab the reins of her husband’s horse, pick up the dog and ride back to the staging area.

She has little memory of what happened next. She was taken to hospital where doctors extracted buckshot from her jaw, removing part of the bone and one of her teeth.

In the days after, she sat down with a police sketch artist and described the man she remembered shooting them.

Willer Frigo described years spent “looking over my shoulder” while waiting for the trial to be held.

“I didn’t know if it was Boris Panovski or not. I guess I was a basket case,” she said. “My whole life was turned upside down.”

The trial continues.

jsims@postmedia.com

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