A key Crown witness told court Tuesday she wanted someone to give 42-year-old Terry Pringle a bloody lip or nose, along with a message to mind his own business.
Instead, Terry Pringle wound up dead on the floor of his Stewart Street apartment in November 2016. Peterborough police say he died of blunt force trauma.
Jordan Osborne has pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder, and his jury trial began this week in Superior Court.
The Crown alleges Osborne was among a group who went to Pringle’s home on Nov. 25, 2016, to rough him up after he told the landlord at his Stewart Street apartment that fellow tenant Samantha Hall was selling drugs from her apartment.
Hall was the Crown’s first witness.
On the stand, she admitted to using and selling cocaine regularly at the time of Pringle’s death. She said she often sold drugs from a friend’s Bethune Street home and gave him a cut of every sale. Hall identified that person as Chris Bolton.
She testified Pringle had, at one point, approached her to swap some crack for cocaine.
She told court that she said, “No.” Shortly after that, she testified, her landlord approached her and said Pringle had told him that she was dealing drugs to a biker gang.
Hall testified it worried her because bikers were dangerous. But she never approached Pringle. Instead, she told court, she called Bolton.
Hall told court the two decided to send Pringle a message, something, Hall testified, that would teach him that, “he shouldn’t be talking about things he doesn’t know.”
She went to Bolton’s home that night. The two discussed their plan as they did lines of cocaine in a bedroom, she testified, and a group of people agreed to head to Pringle’s home in exchange for $60 worth of cocaine.
Hall gave them instructions and directions on how to access Pringle’s apartment.
“It was, ‘Go downstairs, beat him up, tell him not to say things that are none of his concern.’ That’s it,” Hall testified. She couldn’t remember if she had told the group not to bring weapons. She told the court they never discussed killing people.
Osborne, she told court, was one of three who agreed to go to the Stewart Street apartment.
She watched them put their coats on before heading outside. She said she planned to be gone by the time they got back, but a call from a customer kept her tied up on Bethune Street.
She testified that when the group returned, she asked what happened. She said it became apparent that things hadn’t gone exactly as planned.
“To my understanding, something went wrong and Mr. Pringle was injured maybe more than he was supposed to have been,” Hall said.
When she returned to her apartment, she and a friend went to check on Pringle, and her friend used a window to gain access to his apartment. He called out to her that he was dead.
Hall called 911, and told court that police arrived before she was off the phone with the dispatcher. She gave a statement to investigators that night but said she never told them about the plan that was put in place that night.
Hall was among the group charged in connection with Pringle’s death, and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bodily harm in November 2017 and served 18 months in jail.
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