A judge is scheduled to decide today whether a Whitehorse man beat up his girlfriend in their apartment two years ago.

Lawyers made closing arguments Wednesday morning, wrapping up a five-day trial that began in late August.

Court heard that Cheyenne Mcdonald was living with his girlfriend, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, in 2012, though he had been ordered by the court to have no contact with her.

The couple had been living together on and off for two years.

“We were trying to repair things, but it did not work,” the woman testified.

One day in April of that year, she said, she borrowed Mcdonald’s grandmother’s car to take his son to the library. His grandma lived downstairs in the same building.

She returned to the apartment after dropping off the boy with his great-grandmother, and Mcdonald was sleeping on the couch.

“I tried to wake him up to ask him what he wanted for dinner, and he just lost it,” she said.

“He just got up and started hitting and shouting. I just wanted to get my things and leave.”

She testified that he kicked her twice in the buttocks, slammed a bedroom door against her head, and grabbed and pushed her forcefully.

The woman teared up as she spoke.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just really difficult.”

She said Mcdonald told her he’d drown her in the Yukon River.

Then he left the apartment, taking her cell phone with him, she said.

She locked herself in the bedroom, pushing a bureau in front of the door.

She heard him return in the morning, she said, and once he left, she went downstairs and used a neighbour’s phone to call police.

RCMP Const. Ian Crowe testified that he responded to the call, and found the woman with a bruised and swollen face, bruises on her wrist and arm and a blackening left eye.

He noticed she seemed to be having difficulty walking.

Photos of her injuries were entered as evidence in court.

When Mcdonald took the stand, he said the couple had argued that day, but that no physical fight had occurred.

“My guess is she fell down drunk, all popped up on her pills and alcohol,” he said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

He told the court the woman was often drunk, and kept a bottle of vodka in her purse.

According to his version of events, they started arguing at the apartment and he told her to collect her things and leave.

He then asked his grandmother to come upstairs and be a witness during the argument, because “all she does is get me into trouble,” he said of the complainant.

In her testimony, his grandmother said she remembered this.

Her grandson came downstairs and asked for her help, because his girlfriend was drunk and he was worried “she was going to try to pull something,” she said.

She found the woman sitting behind the bedroom door, smelling of alcohol, incoherent and incapable of standing up.

“All I could get out of her was that she wasn’t going to pay the rent,” she testified. While in the apartment, she witnessed no physical altercation between the couple, she said.

She went back downstairs, and her grandson came down shortly after to tell her he was heading to a friend’s house. He’d told his girlfriend he wanted her gone by the time he got back, he said.

Mcdonald said his father drove him downtown, where he met up with friends and spent the night drinking at their home. His father picked him up the next morning.

His friend also testified and supported Mcdonald’s alibi.

The woman was still at the apartment when the man got home.

He asked her why she hadn’t left yet, and when she did, he locked her out. He didn’t hear from or speak to her again, he said.

Mcdonald got in the shower, and that’s when Const. Crowe and another officer knocked on his door.

He heard, but didn’t answer.

After his shower, he walked to the RCMP detachment downtown.

In his closing submissions, Mcdonald’s lawyer, Gordon Coffin, referred to the statement the woman gave police at the time – she said the assault had taken place at about 9:30 p.m.

His client was already at his friend’s house by that point, Coffin said.

He said Mcdonald and the woman had an argument that day, but there had been no physical contact.

“If you believe that, you must acquit,” Coffin said. “If you don’t believe everything Mr. Mcdonald says ... but his evidence, or the evidence as a whole, raises a reasonable doubt, you must acquit.

“If you don’t know who to believe out of the various witnesses, then you must acquit.”

He was referencing a 1994 Supreme Court of Canada case that dealt with burden of proof and assessing witness credibility.

When determining guilt or innocence, the options are not limited to believing the accused or believing the complainant, it stated.

A third alternative exists: without believing the accused, “the jury may still have a reasonable doubt as to his guilt on the whole of the evidence.”

In his closing arguments, Crown prosecutor David Jardine said the nature of the woman’s injuries – fingermarks, bruises, a black eye – is consistent with the altercation she described.

“The description she gave of the assault, the photographs, and the evidence of Const. Crowe ... is very significant corroborating evidence of (her) allegations against Mr. Mcdonald,” he said Wednesday.

Court heard the woman struggled with alcohol addiction, and Jardine said Mcdonald was “throwing her under the bus” by saying she acquired the bruises by falling down drunk.

“There wasn’t an argument,” Jardine said. “This was a physical attack on her.”

He said Mcdonald’s alibi was also suspect, suggesting he told his friend what to write in his statement in order to cover for him.

Judge Peter Chisholm is presiding over the case, and is set to make his decision this afternoon.