A Yukon Supreme Court jury heard testimony Wednesday of a bloody 2011 assault on the custodian at Madley's General Store in Haines Junction two years ago.

Jurors heard of a high-speed chase in the early-morning darkness, and they heard of a bullet hole through the windshield of an RCMP crew cab.

Deputy conservation officer Shane Oakley testified he was in the passenger seat as RCMP Cpl. Kim MacKellar pursued a black SUV-type vehicle heading toward Destruction Bay from Haines Junction, hitting speeds of 140 kilometres per hour.

About six kilometres into the chase, Oakley and MacKellar talked about slowing down to see if the SUV might be turning off the highway onto a side road, Oakley said.

Not long after, he told the jury, the SUV began driving in the opposite lane, and things started flying out the rear passenger doors.

Oakley said first there was a generator about two feet by two feet by two feet in size.

As they continued the chase, there was a chain thrown out, tools, triangular roadside emergency markers, a hind quarter of deer meat, and more, he said.

Oakley said he could not see into the SUV because the rear window was tinted.

Christopher Cornell, a 32-year-old Whitehorse man, is on trial facing two charges of attempted murder by shooting a rifle at Oakley and MacKellar in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 2011.

He is also facing charges of using bear spray to assault the custodian at Madley's General Store, and using violence against the custodian while stealing the store's safe.

In addition, he is charged with shooting at a marked RCMP vehicle while escaping from a robbery, or attempted robbery.

The selection of the nine women and five men of the jury began Monday and ended yesterday morning. The trial is scheduled to go for three or four weeks.

Frank Parent, a 66-year-old Haines Junction resident who fights forest fires in the summer and works as a carpenter in the winter, was the first to testify.

He told the jury his wife had the custodial contract for Madley's, and he was there early on the morning on Sept. 26, 2011 to begin the daily cleaning routine when he was assaulted and doused with bear spray.

Parent testified he did not see the faces of his assailants.

Oakley told the jury that as the chase continued, just before they passed another dark SUV parked on the side of the road, the back window of the SUV being chased shattered or blew out.

He said he saw a man wearing a tanned hoodie fall backward in the vehicle.

As they passed the parked SUV some 32 kilometres outside of Haines Junction, Oakley glanced at it.

He testified as he looked back to the vehicle they were pursuing, there was a loud noise, and the dash board in the RCMP crew cab exploded, with pieces sent flying.

"I looked at Corporal MacKellar and he started bleeding, and there was blood all over his face and he pulled over to the side of the road,” Oakley said.

Oakley told the jury he got out of the truck, helped the officer out of the driver's seat and walked him over to the passenger's seat.

"I asked him if he was OK,” he said. "I do not think he could see all that well, though. He was kind of grasping and holding onto me as we went around the vehicle.”

Oakley said MacKellar kept insisting he was OK, but he continued to favour his left should.

The window on the driver's side of the police truck was gone, he told the jury.

Oakley said he got behind the wheel, turned the vehicle around and started back to Haines Junction.

But in the headlight, he saw somebody slumped over the steering wheel in the other SUV parked on the side of the highway about 30 metres away.

Thinking the individual may have been hurt in the incident, Oakley pulled over, and when he opened the door, he smelled a strong odour of alcohol.

As he reached to remove he keys from the ignition, the individual starting getting out. And then Oakley placed him in the back seat of the RCMP crew cab, and continued onto the Junction, he told the jury.

He wasn't travelling that fast, because it was cold with no driver's side window, and the highway was littered with debris that had been thrown out of the vehicle they were chasing.

Oakley told the jury he used the police radio to call ahead and make sure there was somebody at the nursing station to meet them.

The conservation officer's morning had started when he was awoken by the phone ringing at 6:12. A neighbour down the road in the Willow Acres subdivision left a message saying two people were breaking into her house.

Oakley threw on a jacket and boots and walked out to the road in his pajamas to see if he could see anything, he told the jury. While standing there, he heard MacKellar start his truck. MacKellar, he explained, lived just across the street.

The officer pulled out and headed toward town, but returned quickly.

Oakley stepped out on the road. He told MacKellar he hadn't seen anything, and asked the corporal if he needed a hand checking the trails, as he was quite familiar with the trail network running through the country residential subdivision.

The two drove down to the fire break around the subdivision. Then they got the call on the police radio that Madley's store was being broken into.

When they arrived at Madley's, there was a dark SUV parked in front of the store, along with the truck belonging to Frank Parent, the custodian, Oakley testified.

MacKellar pulled up to the passenger side of the SUV, and Oakley said he could see in the headlights a man with a tanned hoodie in the driver's seat, with his hood pulled up, and the driver's door was open.

A female was in the passenger seat, wearing a light-coloured white hoodie, with the hood pulled up, though he could see a wisp of pink or orange hair sticking out.

Oakley said he did not see either of their faces because of the hoodies.

As the corporal stepped out of the RCMP truck, the SUV backed up and hit the guard rail on the store.

It then quickly sped forward between the RCMP truck and the custodian's truck, and then headed north along the Alaska Highway.

The custodian was the first to testify Wednesday morning.

Parent said he arrived at work before 6 a.m., disarmed the alarm system, turned on the lights and began sweeping.

He'd almost completed the dry sweep when he noticed an individual in a blue parka inside the store.

Initially, he thought it was a local youth, as there had been a couple of break-ins involving adolescents at the store and the person was small in stature.

Parent told the jury he chased down the individual, who was attempting to get out the back door and grabbed their shoulders.

Not wanting to injure a local youth, he told the jury, he didn't put a lot of weight into grabbing the individual.

He said he then told the individual he'd have to tell their parents.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another person in a brown parka and assumed it was a friend of the individual who was still squirming in his arms.

His attention went back to the person he was holding and he soon felt a closed fist hit his nose.

"It did break my nose,” he said, recalling the force caused him to let go. He later noted that "my blood was all over the store” from the injury.

Parent said he heard a male voice tell someone to get the bear spray.

By the time he opened his eyes, there was an instant stinging to his eyes and face from a yellow mist around him. It left him incapacitated for some time before he could see enough to make his way to the bathroom to wash out his eyes.

By that point, the two individuals in the parkas had left the store, Parent told the jury.

While he rinsed out his eyes, it was still not enough to see the numbers on the phone properly to call the RCMP, and it took him three tries to dial the right number.

After informing the RCMP of the robbery, he went to the washroom again, then opened the front door, anxious for the police to arrive.

"I was very surprised,” he said of the scene outside the store.

Recognizing the two parkas as those being worn by the individuals who had been in the store, he saw them using a pallet jack to get the store's safe up on a truck – which looked like a type of suburban SUV.

Not wanting to have another encounter with them, he closed the door and remained inside. He went and called the police again before returning to the bathroom to try to wash away the burning on his face and in his eyes.

Not keeping track of time, Parent told the jury, it was some time later when the manager arrived with her key and a nurse. He said he told them he was going home to get out of his bloody shirt, and then returned to the store 10 or 15 minutes later.

Parent said when he arrived back at the store, Oakley was there standing outside the RCMP truck.

"He said, ‘you think your day was bad,' and then he showed me the bullet hole through the window.”

Oakley testified when he was at the store, he was shown a bullet casing for a 375 H & H rifle that had been picked up from the ground outside the store.

By Chuck Tobin

and Stephanie Waddell

Star Reporters