Andrew Raven
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 25/05) - A man who said he stabbed a Yellowknife teenager in the neck after being attacked outside a suburban convenience store was acquitted of aggravated assault Wednesday.

Jamie Martens burst into tears after jurors announced their verdict, the culmination of an eight-day trail during which Martens maintained he knifed the then 18-year-old in self-defence.

"Here you have someone coming at you," Martens' defence lawyer, James Brydon, said Thursday. "The issue was self-defence."

Martens was arrested Sept. 30, 2004 after he stabbed the man outside the Shell gas station on Range Lake Road. The man, who was bleeding profusely from the neck, was rushed to hospital where doctors worked feverishly to save his life. He suffered a stroke, lost vision in one eye and went through months of rehabilitation where he re-learned how to write and eat.

Witness confirmed the man started the fight, shoving Martens after he walked out of the gas station/convenience store with his girlfriend.

Martens said he pulled a knife from his pocket after being shoved a second time and warned the 6'3 200-pound man to stand back. The man - who was much larger than Martens - charged and that was when he stabbed him in the neck, Martens said.

"Everyone here knows it was self-defence," Martens told the court last week.

The 11 jurors reached the verdict after several hours of deliberations. Martens faced a maximum of 14 years in prison.

Throughout the trial, defence attorney James Brydon picked away at the character of the man who was described as a "bully."

Martens and the man were involved in a schoolyard brawl weeks before the near-fatal stabbing.

That melee ended, Martens said, with the man and several friends pummelling him in the back of a truck.

The man was involved in another fight weeks before that was caught on camera. In the video - which was not shown to jurors - Brydon said the man punched another teenager 21 times before the pair were separated.

Those incidents, Brydon said Thursday, gave Martens a "reasonable basis" to feel threatened the night of the stabbing.

Crown attorney Loretta Colton maintained that while the man was aggressive, Martens did not have the right to stab him in the neck.

"Our position was that even if (the victim) had initiated things, Mr. Martens' reaction went... beyond what is allowed under the law," she said.

The family of the man declined to comment on the verdict. When a relative was asked how they were doing, she answered: "How do you think?"