Anthoney Skookum spent seven months in jail waiting for the chance to prove his innocence. It took a jury less than an hour to decide they agreed with him.

Skookum was charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon last August. The 18-year-old was arrested the day after a bush party where another young man was stabbed, or at least, he said he was stabbed.

Skookum and his cousin had shown up at the party around 1 a.m last Aug. 30. It was a Friday night, the beginning of the end of summer.

The two young men were sure of the time because the girl who dropped them off was watching the clock; she had a curfew and was worried about being late.

"I was going out there to maybe meet some new people, make some new friends," Skookum told a Yukon Supreme Court jury earlier this week.

When they arrived, Skookum's cousin, Sean Bossenberry, took a walk around the fire to see if there was anyone for the two to hang out with, and left his cousin standing alone.

Skookum lit a smoke, the only one he had with him, and waited.

Sitting in the courtroom, he seems like a shy kid, very polite and soft-spoken - the kind of guy who probably hangs around the outskirts of a bonfire until someone calls him over.

Another young man, not someone Skookum knew or recognized, came up to him and asked for a cigarette. Skookum said he didn't have one and the guy got mad.

He shoved Skookum, called him some names and got in his face, court heard.

But Skookum wasn't looking for a fight. He's a big guy, and although his voice was barely above a whisper when he testified, he can probably make some noise when he needs to.

The guy walked away - but the shove he gave Skookum would be only the first in a series of aggressions against the young man.

Bossenberry returned a minute later to report that there wasn't anyone he knew around the fire, and Skookum said he didn't want to stick around.

"It seemed like a pretty rowdy party," he said. "After the first incident, I wanted to get out of there."

Then the second hit came, this one a punch to the side of Skookum's head, out of nowhere, the cousins both said. Bossenberry was stunned.

"I just stood there for a second," he told the court, "I couldn't really believe what had happened."

Skookum started to run, followed by a "posse," a group of kids - all drunk - who wanted to see a fight.

Someone tripped him to slow him down and the group caught up with him.

"I said various times I didn't want to fight," Skookum said, but Warren Burg did want to fight, and when Burg threw the first punch, Skookum defended himself.

"I got him into a headlock and hip tossed him."

It was a short battle, by all accounts, Skookum being bigger, sober and determined to end things quickly.

"He said, 'I'm done,'" Skookum recalled, "so I got up." No one separated the pair, according to both Skookum and Burg; it ended when Burg called "uncle."

"It sounded like everyone was calling me names - calling me out," Skookum said. He was standing with his cousin, trying to get his bearings.

He was worried his iPod would be busted. It was brand new, Skookum had spent $300 on it, and he didn't want it damaged.

The iPod was entered as evidence at the trial. It's a sleek silver thing, about four inches long, really sharp-looking. He passed it to his cousin for safekeeping.

"I heard people saying, 'He's got a knife!' Then they circled me."

Skookum was pushed down again, and felt something smash over his head. Bossenberry heard breaking glass and turned to see his cousin unconscious on the ground.

"I started pushing people away, telling them to leave him alone," Bossenberry said.

When Skookum came to a couple seconds later, he saw his cousin standing above him, shoving people off.

Skookum didn't waste any time. He got to his feet, called out for his cousin to run, and they ran.

They ran flat-out for 15 or 20 minutes, they said. Every time they would slow down, they'd hear the sound of the posse following.

They didn't stop until they reached the Alaska Highway. From there, they walked all the way home to Arkell. They were never passed by a police car or an ambulance.

At 3:30 a.m. - two hours after Skookum and Bossenberry had taken off - someone called the police to report a kid named Matt Young had been stabbed in a fight.

When the two officers arrived, they found a very drunk Young bleeding freely from a fresh wound.

He told them he'd been stabbed by Skookum, that he'd broken up a fight a few minutes earlier and when he turned his back, Skookum had stabbed him twice under the arm.

The police took some pictures, but didn't find a knife. They took a statement from Young and talked to some other people at the party.

In making his case against Skookum, Crown prosecutor K.C. Komosky called seven witnesses, two of them police officers, the other five all kids who had been at the party.

They all told different versions of the story.

Most said it was dark, except for one young man who said it was light enough for him to see Skookum waving a knife around before the fight.

He also said he didn't really remember what had happened that night, but had "pieced together the story" after talking to his buddies.

Another one said she and her friends had chased Skookum and Bossenberry full-tilt for about 15 minutes, then walked back to the fire.

When she returned - half an hour later at the very least - Young was bleeding like he'd just been wounded.

All of them admitted to being drunk.

Only one of them said he actually saw Young step into the fight between Skookum and Burg.

Burg said that never happened. Young said it did; Skookum and Bossenberry said it didn't.

The cops took only two sworn statements. They talked to Young, who said was drunk enough to be slurring and stumbling.

They didn't take any notes at the scene, they didn't get a warrant to search Skookum's house for a knife or bloody clothes.

One of the cops took a couple photos of some blood on the ground but those photos never made it to trial, and no one seems to know what happened to them.

Based on Young's version of events they arrested him.

He was denied bail and spent the next seven months of his young life at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre.

No one from Skookum's family was in the courtroom Wednesday afternoon to hear the jury's verdict.

"I grew up living in group homes - I kinda lost touch with my family," Skookum explained early in the trial.

He'd only reconnected with his cousin a month before he was thrown in jail. And although Bossenberry tried to defend his cousin when he was being attacked by a mob of drunk teenagers, he said in court he wasn't about to lie on Skookum's behalf or make up a story to protect him.

When the nine women and two men of the jury filed back into the courtroom - only 45 minutes after being sent out to deliberate - many of them looked directly at Skookum and smiled. A couple glanced past him at the empty courtroom.

Skookum just smiled and nodded. He hugged his two lawyers, both from legal aid.

There was no one to meet him as he left the courthouse.