Young couple found Rene Sweeney on floor of video store, saw man running away

The young couple went into Adults Only Video on Paris Street in Sudburythat cold morning in January 1998 to see if they had a copy of the Pamela Anderson sex tape.

What they found was a woman lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

A 45-year-old man, whose name is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, testified at the ReneSweeney murder trial in Sudbury Friday morning over Zoom.

Next to the woman on the floor, he said hesaw a male squatting down, shoving something into a bag.

"He didn't make eye contact, didn't say anything to me and just ran past me," the man told the court, where 43-year-old Steven Wright is on trial for second-degree murder.

"I didn't know what was going on. I felt faint."

He told the woman on the floor that he was going to get help. He remembers her head moving, but didn't hear a response.

The defence asked a series of questions about the bag the witness saw, pointing out that he told police detectives 25 years ago that it could have been the jacket found not far from the crime scene.

The couple, both studying at Laurentian University at the time, wereengaged back in 1998 and are still married today. The woman, whose name is also covered by a court-ordered publication ban, took the witness stand in the afternoon, over Zoom.

Sheremembered seeing what she thought was vomit on the floor and her fiancstorming out of the store, telling her that a woman was bleeding inside and sent her to a nearby bagel shop to call for help.

She said she and her husband have been shown pictures of possible suspects over the years by police to see if they match the person they saw ran out of the store that day, but none of them did.

On Thursday, the court heard from Paulette Tailleferwho from about 25 feet away saw a "boy" running quickly through the parking lot toward Paris Street that morning.

She said he wasn't wearing a coat on a cold day, was carrying a bag under his arm and looked "straight at" her with eyes "like saucers."

Taillefer's account was the basis for thefirst sketch of the suspect Sudbury police released in the weeks following the murder in the winter of 1998.

The defence asked her several questions about whether or not she saw any scar or blood on the man's face and she said she did not. Similar questions were asked to the young couple who went into the store that day, who also didn't remember any scratches on the face of the person who ran from the scene.

The court has heard that DNA found under Sweeney's fingernails are a match for Wright and the Crown has suggested experts will testify that it comes from her scratching her attacker, while the defence has said it could have gotten there in other ways, including from trying to give medical assistance to the 23-year-old.

Wright's lawyers told the jury in their opening statement that headmits to being in the video store that day, but that Sweeney had already been stabbed when he came in.

Justice Robert Gordon told the court Friday that the jury is down to 13, after one man learned of a connection his wife had to Sweeney. The judge also told the jury he will be raising their compensation to $100 per day from the standard $40 per day.