Jury hears 16-year-old girl was pregnant when killed in Kamloops, B.C.

KAMLOOPS, B.C. – A 16-year-old girl was murdered hours after she and her boyfriend learned she was pregnant, says a Crown lawyer.

Alex Janse said the Crown will attempt to prove that 16-year-old CJ Fowler’s boyfriend killed her in the early morning of Dec. 5, 2012 after an emergency room doctor told them she was pregnant.

Dog walkers in Guerin Creek discovered Fowler’s body under a 25-kilogram concrete block, her cheekbone and jaw broken and airway crushed.

Mounties say she was dating Damien Taylor, now 24, when she was killed. He has been charged with second-degree murder.

The Crown is expected to call 21 witnesses in the first week of a trial that has been scheduled for three weeks in B.C. Supreme Court.

Witnesses include the dog walkers who came across Fowler’s body and a forensic pathologist who is expected to testify that she died of asphyxiation.

The court is also set to hear from Fowler’s stepfather, who bought bus tickets for the pair so they could go from Kamloops to Terrace, an emergency room doctor who treated Fowler for symptoms of crystal meth use, and a nurse who heard Taylor and Fowler arguing as they walked out of Royal lnland Hospital.

Fowler’s body was discovered hours later, Janse told the jury. Taylor headed north on a bus to Terrace that morning.

Among the items seized by police from Taylor’s backpack was an SD card from what police believe was Fowler’s phone.

RCMP Cpl. Jay Grierson testified he intercepted Taylor at the Greyhound bus depot in Prince George. Taylor was treated as a potential witness and put up for the night in a hotel beside the police detachment.

After Taylor checked out the next day, police searched his room. Grierson said officers found a ripped-up bus ticket in the toilet and socks in the garbage can. The Crown said the socks were stained with blood matching Fowler’s DNA.

Prince George RCMP Const. Brian Merriman told court that he searched the roof of the RCMP detachment, beside the hotel where Taylor stayed.

The search was done in April 2014, partly because snow covered the roof until then.

Merriman testified he found a cellphone on the two-storey rooftop. The Crown said it belonged to Fowler.

On Dec. 13, 2012, Fowler’s parents came to Kamloops, where they met with major crime investigators and later went to the site where the teen’s body was found.

Court heard they took part in a prayer ceremony with family members, friends, a spiritual counsellor, the chief of the Kamloops Indian Band and a representative of the Assembly of First Nations. (Kamloops This Week)

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version incorrectly reported Taylor’s age as 22.