Details surrounding the August 2015 death of Christopher Brisson were revealed Monday in Yukon Supreme Court.

It was the first day of trial for Darryl Sheepway, 38, who is facing a first-degree murder charge in relation to the 25-year-old Brisson’s death.

Sheepway appeared in court Monday morning and pled not guilty to the charge. But whether he is responsible for Brisson’s death is not in dispute.

During a court appearance last March, defence lawyer Lynn MacDiarmid said Sheepway was prepared to plead guilty to manslaughter, but the Crown would not accept a lesser charge.

Many of the facts in the case are not in dispute.

Crown prosecutor Leo Lane began presenting his case by reading an agreed statement of facts.

According to those, in early August 2015, Sheepway began buying crack cocaine from Brisson, and the two were meeting almost daily.

Sheepway was paying for the drugs by taking out cash advances on a credit card belonging to his wife, from whom he was hiding his drug use.

When she noticed the missing money, she took away his credit card and cell phone.

Sheepway had no access to money when he called Brisson on the landline from his home to meet on Aug. 28 to buy drugs.

He drove to the Mountain Ridge Motel, where Brisson was staying, and secured $50 worth of drugs on credit.

The court also heard Sheepway’s description of the events that took place that day.

Co-crown counsel Jennifer Grandy played a lengthy video taken on Oct. 4, 2016. In it, Sheepway, handcuffed and clad in a red-orange jail outfit, takes three RCMP officers on a re-enactment of the crime.

From the back seat of a van driving on the Alaska High way, Sheepway says he had planned on committing suicide that day and wanted to get drugs to build up the courage.

“I was freaking out because I’d used drugs all morning and all the night before,” he said.

He was nervous about asking Brisson for drugs on credit, he said, because he had never done so before.

After finishing the drugs he’d been given by Brisson, Sheepway began driving home, but decided he needed more drugs and drove back to the hotel.

Wanted drugs

“I was just focused on wanting more drugs,” Sheepway told the officers, noting that he was already high and “wanted more drugs bad.”

Sheepway got to the hotel and realized Brisson was no longer there. He used the office phone to call Brisson and asked to meet at a pullout on the McLean Lake Road, where they had met on previous occasions.

Video footage from an adjacent Norcope Construction property sets the time of the meeting at around 3:48 p.m.

Sheepway said while waiting at the pullout, he was deciding whether to ask Brisson for more drugs on credit or try to rob him.

“I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do? What am I going to do?’” he said.

He had a shotgun on his lap covered with a blanket, he said, because he was planning on using it to commit suicide.

While at the pullout, it was when Brisson looked down to get drugs that Sheepway raised his gun and told Brisson to give him all the drugs he had.

At some point, Sheepway shot Brisson, with the bullet entering Brisson’s left shoulder and lodging in his right jaw. An autopsy revealed that he died from “catastrophic blood loss.”

But the details surrounding the shooting are under dispute.

According to Sheepway, Brisson grabbed the gun. While the pair struggled, two shots went off accidentally, shattering Brisson’s truck windows.

Brisson then began driving forward, and Sheepway leaned out his window to shoot through the back of Brisson’s truck. Brisson then sped backwards, but crashed on the opposite side of the road, nose-first into the trees.

Sheepway said he thought Brisson had gotten away when his truck sped out of sight.

“I was panicking, thinking he had just gotten away,” he said.

But when he went to drive home, he saw that Brisson’s truck had crashed.

He stopped, walked over to the truck and turned off the ignition.

He found Brisson’s body lying about 10 to 20 feet away on the ground, face-up.

Sheepway took a baggie of drugs out of Brisson’s pocket and about $2,500 in cash out of the other.

He then drove home, stopping to take the drugs.

Sheepway said at the time he was thinking, “Oh my God, I just killed someone.”

When he got home, Sheepway changed and said he thought he’d better get rid of the evidence.

He drove back to the Mclean Lake Road, and said he was “freaking out” and “really high.”

He picked up the shotgun shells and put Brisson’s body in the back of his truck.

Dump body

Sheepway then drove onto the Alaska Highway. He said he was planning to dump Brisson’s body in the Yukon River somewhere out of town, but there was heavy traffic.

“I was panicking because I had a body in the truck and I thought people could see me,” he said.

Sheepway quickly turned onto the Miles Canyon Road.

Seeing that there were two parked cars and people walking on the other side of the river, he drove up the hill overlooking the canyon. He backed up to the edge of the hill and pushed Brisson’s body out the back of the truck.

Sheepway described Brisson’s body as rolling down the hill “like a sack of peanuts.

“I just thought, ‘Whatever; it’ll eventually get found,’ ” he said.

Sheepway then drove to a carwash, where he cleaned the blood out of the back of his truck.

He then went on to the Canada Games Centre, where he thought his wife was.

When he didn’t see her, he washed his hands and the blood off his pants in the washroom and disposed of the shotgun shells in a garbage bin in the parking lot.

He called his wife, who was at a friend’s house, and drove to meet her. Later, he drove home with his daughter and said he put her to bed at around 8:30 that night.

The next day, Sheepway said, he went back to Miles Canyon with his family, and they took a picture on the suspension bridge.

Sheepway said he wanted to see if anything was going on in the area, but didn’t check to see if Brisson’s body was visible.

Brisson’s remains were discovered Sept. 1 by people walking in the area.

According to the agreed statement of facts, on Aug. 30, Sheepway entered detox in Whitehorse with the help of his wife. He later went to Ontario for residential treatment.

While there, he committed a string of robberies between Nov. 9 and Nov. 25. He has since pled guilty to the related charges and has had them waived to the Yukon. Sentencing on that matter is set for Nov. 27 in Whitehorse.

In March 2016, Sheepway returned to the Yukon.

On May 28 of that year, he made a distressed phone call to his wife from Prince George, B.C. He said he planned to commit suicide, and admitted to having killed Brisson.

Sheepway was apprehended in Prince George under the province’s Mental Health Act.

When released, he was arrested on charges of theft and fraud.

In the Yukon, he pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to a period of incarceration at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.

Upon release from that sentence, he was arrested in Whitehorse on Sept. 19 on the murder charge in relation to Brisson’s death.

The trial, being presided over by Justice Leigh Gower, resumed today and is scheduled for four weeks.