As the retrial regarding a 2023 stabbing in Behchokǫ̀ entered its second week, jurors heard a statement Zakk Lafferty provided to police after he was arrested.
Deijean Drybones was found with a stab wound in Behchokǫ̀ in the early morning of August 4, 2023. He was taken to the community’s health centre and later Yellowknife’s Stanton Territorial Hospital, where he died.
Lafferty was charged with second-degree murder in 2023. In October 2025, a mistrial was declared after the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict.
The retrial began last week with testimony from those who were with the 17-year-old on the night he died, as well as RCMP officers and a coroner who performed the autopsy.
On Monday of the trial’s second week, jurors heard from Jeff Linnen, an RCMP officer in the major crimes unit. Linnen helped search the house where Deijean was found – Lafferty’s grandparents’ house – and took a statement from Lafferty after he was arrested.
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In the statement, which was played to jurors, Lafferty tells Linnen he went to the house where Deijean was hanging out with friends to look for someone who no longer lived there. Lafferty said when he arrived at the house, one of the individuals with Deijean invited Lafferty into the house to party.
Lafferty told Linnen there were “three guys” – one was Deijean – in the house along with Lafferty, and they shared Lafferty’s alcohol.
When Lafferty left the house, he told Linnen the three individuals beat him up on the road to the school, stole his alcohol and his phone, and kicked his eye. Lafferty can be seen in the statement with a bandage over his eye. Linnen confirmed he received stitches.
Pressed by Linnen to provide more details about what happened after Lafferty was beaten up, Lafferty said multiple times he went to his grandparents’ house and went to bed.
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Linnen told Lafferty he believed Lafferty was leaving things out, and that he did return to the house where Deijean was to try to retrieve his phone, but brought something to scare the people who beat him up into giving it back. Lafferty denied this.
After the statement was played in court, the defence questioned Linnen about his search of the house where Deijean was found, asking if he found anything with evidentiary value.
Linnen said he identified phones in the living room, one of which matched Lafferty’s description of his phone.
The Crown is expected to call its last witness, the lead investigator, on Tuesday.
