Crown quizzes accused in Windsor murder trial on timeline of events
One of the accused individuals standing trial for an April 2020 south Windsor murder took the witness stand again Thursday in Superior Court, but this time, to be examined by the assistant crown attorney.
Tameko Vilneus, 28, is one of three men accused in the shooting death of 20-year-old Madisen Gingras.
Co-accused Kyle Hanna, 29, and Keermaro Rolle, 26, are also charged with first-degree murder and were present in court Thursday.
Assistant crown attorney Nicole Lamphier spent the entire day grilling Vilneus about the timeline of events that led to the fatal shooting of Gingras on April 1, 2020.
Two people were shot that night, Madisen Gingras and Jacob Reaume.
Reaume was shot in the arm and lived. His girlfriend, Gingras, was killed by a fatal gunshot wound to the head.
Reaume had been on the stand weeks earlier in the trial and served as a key witness for the crown, as he was the local drug dealer buying drugs from the accused parties.
When the defence started asking Reaume questions, inconsistencies arose between his preliminary evidence and trial evidence, where he admitted to lying under oath a number of times.
Vilneus testified Wednesday that he became the primary contact for Reaume during their second meeting in February of 2020.
Vilneus testified he would regularly make the trip to Windsor with $10,000 worth of drugs and exchange them with Reaume for cash.
Crown attorney Lamphier spent a lot of time Thursday asking Vilneus about a series of meetings in February and March arranged between him and Reaume.
Lamphier went through text messages, phone records, and motel records, trying to establish Vilneus’ version of the timeline compared Reaume’s.
Lamphier suggested on numerous occasions that Vilneus knew Madisen Gingras before the night of the fatal shooting, to which Vilneus responded “no” each time.
Lamphier also suggested Vilneus, and the co-accused Rolle and Hanna, were in a room together on April 1, growing frustrated with Reaume and hatching a plan to “take care of him.”
In the presence of the jury, Lamphier displayed a text message from Vilneus to Reaume from March 31, 2020, the day before the shooting.
It read: “I’m not into lil kids games you tryna have me like a fool.”
Lamphier suggested Vilneus and his colleagues were growing frustrated by Reaume for dodging them, but Vilneus responded, “no,” they simply wanted to buy marijuana from him because they were running out and that they had already squared up on a previous drug transaction the day before.
Vilneus continuously disagreed with that line of questioning and any suggestion that the group had a plan to “deal with” Reaume.
The trail resumes Friday at 11 a.m.
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