The 25-year-old Prince George man on trial for first-degree murder of a 22-year-old mother testified Sept. 17 in BC Supreme Court that he wanted to steal her PlayStation 4 game console in order to pay a legal bill.
Zain Xavier Wood said before Justice Michael Tammen that he originally met Isabelle Thomas through a WorkBC job training program and dated her in 2019. Also in 2019, Wood was hospitalized when his mother called police after he reported hearing voices in his head. Wood said he ended up swinging at one of the police officers who drove him to hospital.
Wood testified that he attended Alpine Village, where Thomas lived, three times in July 2023 because he thought he could steal her PlayStation 4 and sell it to a friend for $400 in order to pay a lawyer.
On the first occasion, Wood realized Thomas’s boyfriend had come home, so “I just turned around.” He returned July 13, 2023, but “I ended up ripping off the doorbell camera … I was just (expletive) around.”
The third and final time, July 18, 2023, Wood said, he was high on methamphetamine. He said he walked in the unlocked front door and “creeped up the stairs,” toward Thomas’s bedroom, where he remembered seeing the game console.
“Then we both startled each other,” Wood said. “At first, when I turned around the corner, she was at the end of the bed, walking towards the door.
“She said, ‘Oh, God!’ really loud and then she, like, came at me, and I grabbed her on the shoulder then I started stabbing her,” Wood said, clarifying that he grabbed her with his left hand and stabbed her with a knife in his right hand.
Defence lawyer Tony Lagemaat then asked what caused Wood to believe nobody was in the townhouse when he walked in.
“Because she (Thomas) was one of the voices I was hearing at the time, I even asked, ‘are you home?’ She said, ‘no’,” Wood said.
After he inflicted injuries on her, Wood said Thomas collapsed, he looked to his right and saw one of her children.
“I just took off running,” he said.
“Did you think you might kill her?” Lagemaat asked.
Replied Wood: “No.”
“Did you, at any time, premeditate or plan causing the death of Miss Thomas on July 18, 2023?”
“No,” Wood said.
“Have you ever, at any time, fantasized about killing Miss Thomas?”
“No,” he said.
Under cross-examination, Wood admitted he went home, washed his hands, took a shower and washed the clothes he was wearing. He also invited a female friend to watch a horror movie with him about a serial killer doll named Chucky.
Crown prosecutor Tyler Bauman challenged Wood on his testimony, doubting his claim that he went to Thomas’s to “steal a badly outdated and relatively worthless gaming console that you had no way of knowing was still there.”
“I assumed it was still there,” Wood said.
Replied Bauman: “Which makes my point, Mr. Wood. You had no way of knowing it was there.”
Wood pleaded not guilty when the trial opened Sept. 2. Crown prosecutor Kristina King said it took Wood 35 seconds to kill Thomas by stabbing her 16 times in the presence of her two young children.
The trial is scheduled for another 10 days.
