Facebook messages reveal drug deal was being set up just before fatal Saint John shooting

About an hour before her fianc was shot outside their apartment on Saint John's lower west side last November, someone used Melissa Daley's Facebook account to set up a drug deal.

Under cross-examination on Tuesday afternoon, Daley said the messages must have been sent by Mark Shatford. She insisted they weren't from her.

Reading through the texts exchanged on Messenger, defence lawyer Brian Munro painted a picture of what led up to Shatford's shooting.

Justin David Breau, 37, is charged with second-degree murder in Shatford's death.

Emergency personnel responded to a 911 call made at 4:25 a.m. on Nov. 17, 2019, and found Shatford lying in the street, bleeding from numerous pellet holes in his abdomen.

Defence lawyer Brian Munro asked Daley about a message sent from her Facebook account to Breau at 3:07 a.m. on Nov. 21.

The exchange began with a virtual wave from her account to Breau'sand proceeded to set up a drug deal. They discussed quantities, prices, possible trades and whether the person using Daley's account had change for a $100 bill.

Daley, 38, denied that she sent the messages.

"It must have been Mark," she testified. "It wasn't me."

She said she and Shatford were in the bedroom together, and he often used her phone and her Facebook account to send messages through Messenger.

In the exchange, a printout of which was shown to the courtroom on a television screen, Breau wrote, "On way," and the response from Daley's account was that the door was open.

Munro asked Daley if she had invited Breau into her family's home that night, and she denied doing so.

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Munro also asked Daley about other drug-related exchanges from her account, but she denied they were from her until he asked her about a suggested trade for "weed." That, she said, "must have been mine."

In that Aug. 26, 2019, exchange, she suggested she could take a bike and pick up the drugs.

Daley also said she lent Breau $700.

On direct examination, Daley testified that she and Shatford were in the bedroom watching a movie sometime after 3 a.m. on Nov. 17, 2019, when she noticed shadows under the bedroom door.

She went to investigate and discovered two masked intruders in the kitchen of their second-floor apartment.

When Daley confronted them, they claimed they had the wrong apartment and headed toward the door.

She testified that she called out to Shatford, and as she followed the first two intruders toward the front of the apartment, a third man appeared from the bathroom.

Daley said Shatford and the man exchanged words but the only word she could make out was "money."

The two men started wrestling. Daley said she managed to pull down the man's mask and recognized him as Justin Breau, someone she's known since childhood.

Daley told the court that Shatford grabbed a large wrench on the way out. The two men continued to wrestle as they went down the stairs.

She said her teenaged son had followed the first two men outside the apartment and was fighting with one of them on the lawn, while the third man sat in the front passenger seat of a vehicle parked a short distance from the front door.

Daley said Shatford stopped short of the vehicle, while Breau went to the driver's door and reached in.

She said Breau was about 15 feet (almost five metres) awaywhen he fired at Shatford. She said she didn't see the weapon, only a flash as it went off. She said Shatford immediately crumpled to the ground.

Daley said Breau got into the driver's seat and all three men drove off in a maroon-coloured car.

Daley testified that later that night, she discovered that a lockbox in the bathroom that contained three kinds of prescription medication had gone missing.