Bush bash homicide: Witness recalls feeling scared, defends not calling 911

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As the bush party was winding down, Jonathan Lopez had a bad feeling.

He was standing with friends near a big bonfire in the clearing of a southwest London wooded area just off Pack Road in the early morning of July 31, 2021.

“The night was ending because we couldn’t see very well,” he testified Thursday at the second-degree murder trial of Emily Altmann, 22, and Carlos Guerra Guerra, 23. “I remember just seeing people masked up, coming in wearing all black.”

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There were two of them, both male, both appearing to be 18 or 19 years old. One was tall, slim with curly hair. “I remember he was wearing all black and a shoulder bag,” Lopez said, describing what he said looked like a fanny pack worn crossways across the man’s body.

The man walked right past Lopez, almost brushing his shoulder. He had on a black COVID mask and he could remember seeing “white strips” on his body. Lopez could only see his eyes.

The other was shorter, but heavier. He was also wearing a surgical mask and his head was covered with a hood.

And it seemed, Lopez said, they were looking for someone.

“I just didn’t feel safe,” he said. He decided to find Nick Podetz, a friend who drove Lopez to the party,

“I remember I told him: ‘I think it’s time to go, I don‘t feel safe.’”

Lopez had good reason to be anxious. Within minutes of that encounter with the masked men, Western University student Josue Silva, 18, would be fatally shot in the abdomen. At the same time, Lopez and Podetz were making their getaway.

Altmann and Guerra Guerra have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder at the Superior Court jury trial that has entered the fourth of its 10 expected weeks.

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They also have pleaded not guilty to assault with a weapon of Logan Marshall, Silva’s friend. The jury has heard he suffered a concussion.

The jury has heard Altmann and her friends were involved in an argument with other attendees at the party after a drink was thrown at them and unwanted photos were snapped. They left the party and a fuming Altmann made calls and sent texts from her vehicle, before returning to the party with people she had summoned to assist her in a fight.

The Crown’s witness list has been mostly young people who attended the large mid-summer bush bash near Lambeth that attracted about 100 teens. Many of the witnesses went to school together or knew each other through mutual acquaintances.

Looming large at the trial is the then-teenagers’ constant use of cellphone apps to communicate quickly.

Lopez described using Snapchat to contact friends while he and Podetz ran through the woods, away from the party.

Lopez testified he didn’t see any argument before seeing the masked men. But he said, in answer to questions from assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Moser, he heard something had happened earlier but didn’t think much about it.

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But the men concerned him. Lopez said he was more worried than Podetz, and had to urge him to leave. They wanted to leave with their other friends Marshall, Silva and others, but couldn’t see them.

They decided to head up the main path to Pack Road, until they saw flashlights coming toward them. “We couldn’t see who was coming from a distance. We weren’t going to take any risks. . . . We decided to go through the bushes and see where they would take them.”

They took a side path back to a main road. When they exited the bush, Lopez said he received a phone call from Rachel Johnson, a friend of Marshall’s then-girlfriend Isabella Restrepo. Johnson told him she didn’t feel safe and “she just didn’t know where she was and she was hiding with (Restrepo) behind some bushes.”

Johnson also told them “Logan and Josue were in trouble” and that’s why they were hiding in the bushes. She said she needed help.

“At the time, me and Nick didn’t think much of it,” Lopez said, and he told her to call them if “anything gets serious.”

Lopez said as he and Podetz made their way to the car, he heard some screaming. Others told him they thought they heard fireworks.

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They ran into another friend, Foster Lund, who was trying to call Silva and received no answer. Lund left to find another friend. Lopez and Podetz used Lopez’s phone and the Snapchat app to contact Marshall, who told them over the speaker phone he was “in distress.”

“He didn’t know where he was,” Lopez said. Marshall was mumbling and said he was in some thick bushes and needed help. He said he “got hit” and kept asking: “Where are my friends?”

They told Marshall to turn the maps feature on the app, which would allow friends to locate him. They found Marshall in front of a condo complex on Colonel Talbot Road. He was “kind of hidden” and laying near some bushes.

Lopez said they could tell he was hurt. Marshall was able to tell them he had been struck on the back of the head, but he was more concerned about what happened to his friends than going to the hospital.

They drove back to Pack Road and found Lund and a friend, and gave them a ride home two minutes away. Marshall was in the back seat, on his phone, looking for his friends and talking to Restrepo, who told him the ambulance was there and they were taking Silva to the hospital.

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They drove back the entrance to the bush, where police were taking statements. Lopez said he didn’t know Silva’s health status when he gave his statement. Podetz drove Marshall to hospital and Lopez got a ride home.

The next day, he was part of a large group that gathered at Marshall’s house after learning Silva had died.

He told Moser he never knew Silva to have a machete or a gun. And he said he saw no weapons at the party.

In cross-examination, Altmann’s defence lawyer, Nathan Gorham, suggested Lopez wasn’t telling the truth and was covering for his friends who started the fight. He asked repeatedly why he didn’t call 911 once Marshall was in the car and why he dropped friends off before speaking to police.

“They were scared,” Lopez said of his friends. “I think they just didn’t want their parents to know where they were that night. A bush bash is a place where you don’t want your parents to know where you’re at.”

The trial continues on Friday.

jsims@postmedia.com

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