Two weeks before Joelon Verma was arrested for the murder of Brittney Irving, he told investigators trying to confirm who killed her that “there’s bigger people involved.”
“You need to dig deep on what she was doing,” said Verma in a recorded interview played for the jury. He said Irving was “into some big shit with some big people” and that police were “wasting” their time looking at him as a suspect.
“Honestly, look at the houses she lost, look at the money she lost,” said Verma when asked by police where they should be looking.
Less than a month before Irving disappeared on April 6, 2010, police busted Irving in connection to a marijuana grow operation and she was put up in a hotel by Verma.
“She stressed out on me and asked me to get her a hotel,” Verma told police on June 10, 2010. “All I was doing was trying to help her.”
Verma says he was supposed to meet with Irving the day she disappeared but “she just didn’t show up.”
After a time, “she just wouldn’t answer any of my calls.”
“The last time she didn’t text me was 11 or 12,” Verma told Sgt. Sam Ghadban.
He denied being in Mike Roberts’ truck that day and said he was with his cousin, Jason Labonte, all day.
“There was no second I wasn’t with him that day,” he said.
During his trial, over the past month, the jury has heard testimony from Roberts saying he lent his truck to Verma on April 6, 2010. Labonte testified he was with Verma most of the day, but was contacted in the afternoon to help pull out Verma—in a vehicle that wasn’t his—after he got stuck in the McCulloch Forest Service Road area.
When Labonte later showed police the location, officers found Irving’s body nearby. She had been shot four times.
The Crown has wrapped up its case and defence is calling no evidence in the first degree murder trial of Verma.
Closing submissions are expected to get underway Wednesday.
By Cheryl Wierda, Capital News contributor
Week 5:
Kelowna’s Brittney Irving seen hugging her accused killer
