SASKATOON – What began as a fight over Snapchat spiralled into chaos inside a small Saskatoon apartment the night Nykera Brown was fatally shot, a Saskatoon court heard Wednesday.
Robbin Vermette, Andrew Rosenfeldt’s aunt, testified she “had it” with the couple’s constant arguments when the fight over social media erupted in her living room on Nov. 15, 2022.
“They were fighting about Snapchat,” Vermette told the court. “She went into his account and was getting upset with what she was seeing.”
Vermette said both Brown and Rosenfeldt said they wanted to end their relationship. That evening, however, Brown said she was leaving.
“I told him, ‘Tell her I want her out of my house,’” Vermette testified. “I was tired of the back and forth and the f-this, f-that. I’d had it.”
Vermette said she had retreated to her bedroom to play with her cats and watch YouTube on her cell phone. A short time span passed, then she heard a bang.
“All of a sudden I hear a bang and I hear Andrew screaming,” she said. Rosenfeldt then burst into her room, crying, with “two fists up in front of his face,” and urged her to call 911.
Crown Prosecutor Elizabeth Addabor questioned Vermette on inconsistencies in her police statement and court testimony.
“You said Nykera shot herself, how?” Addabor asked.
“She was shot in the head I assumed,” Vermette replied. “I discussed it with Andrew. I just think she killed herself because she was shot in the head.”
The Crown challenged this, pointing out that Vermette told police in 2022 that Rosenfeldt didn’t know who shot Brown – and that if he had known, he would have told her.
Vermette said she didn’t remember making that statement to police. Addabor also asked if Vermette remembered Rosenfeldt claiming two masked men had entered the apartment and shot Brown, to which Vermette said she didn’t.
Under questioning from defence lawyer Chris Murphy, Vermette agreed the gunshot seemed to come “out of the blue,” and that she had not heard arguing immediately before the bang.
Vermette said Brown had expressed suicidal thoughts about a week and a half before her death.
“I come out and she said ‘I want to kill myself,’” Vermette testified. “I asked her ‘why would you want to do that?’ She said ‘I don’t want to be around anymore.’”
Throughout Vermette’s testimony, Rosenfeldt, turned in the prisoner’s box to face her and watched intently.
Murphy clarified the relationship between Vermette and the accused, establishing that Rosenfeldt is her godson, though he calls her “Auntie.”
A ‘jinxed’ apartment and a troubled past
Vermette, who broke her ankle twice in 2022 and spent months in hospital, said she came home in May to find Brown living in her apartment with Rosenfeldt. She called the apartment “jinxed” – saying her husband had died there, she’d broken her ankle there, and Brown had been shot there.
Court heard that Rosenfeldt and Brown shared the apartment’s living room and often argued “two to four” times a week.
Gang ties and a strained life
Speaking with Rosenfeldt’s mother, Janet McNiven, after court, she said her son and Nykera were both members of the Terror Squad street gang. She said he lost his restaurant job during the COVID-19 pandemic and joined the gang in 2020 to make money.
“I told him, ‘Don’t go down that road,’” she said. “But he said he needed the money."
Rosenfeldt is charged with second-degree murder in Brown’s death. His non-jury trial, before Justice Heather MacMillan-Brown, continues this week in Saskatoon Court of King’s Bench.
ljoy@sasktoday.ca
