KAMLOOPS, B.C. — A man accused of murder in an alleged high school love triangle told police his ex-girlfriend was "the mastermind" behind the plot.
Tyler Myers, 22, was shot to death in a Salmon Arm schoolyard on Nov. 21, 2008.
The accused killer was 16 and his ex-girlfriend was 17 at the time. Neither can be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
They were charged with first-degree murder four year later at the end of an RCMP undercover operation.
On Tuesday, jurors in B.C. Supreme Court watched more than two hours of a video taken the day after the male accused was arrested in November 2012.
In the recording, an RCMP officer persuades the male accused to explain what unfolded.
The officer says the female accused was trying to pin the murder on the male accused, who later starts crying and says he hadn't slept through the night since Myers was killed four years earlier.
He says his ex-girlfriend was also dating Myers at the time, and she told him that Myers planned to attack his family.
“I was scared,” he says.
There was an altercation between Myers and the male accused at her house 11 days before the murder, court heard in the video.
The male accused says he walked in on the two of them in bed together, then he asked to speak to Myers. He says Myers pushed him, and he ran away.
The female accused, now 25, then started talking about removing Myers from the picture, court heard.
“She just said she wants to get rid of him,” the male accused, who is 24, says in the police video.
“I was just so stupidly, irrationally, illogically in love with her. I was 16 years old.
“I was scared, I was confused. I just felt like she was this absolute angel.”
On the day of the murder, he says he cut class with the female accused and a friend. That’s when they hatched a plan.
That evening, the male accused hid with a borrowed rifle in a stand of trees at a schoolyard. He says the female accused lured Myers to the area to be shot.
"She called me and said, 'Are you ready? We're coming down,'" the male accused says on the video, describing the female accused as "the mastermind."
"I said, 'Yup.' I was shaking."
The male accused says he had never shot a gun before killing Myers. He told police on the video he shot his romantic rival once from his hideout before emerging and firing two more shots at the request of the female accused.
“I just shot,” he said. “I don't know where it hit him. He was just standing there looking around.
“He was just on the ground and she said, ‘Shoot him in the head.’
“She looked at me and said, ‘You did good, Babe,’ and gave me a kiss.”
Myers was struck with two bullets in his back and one in the back of his head, court heard.
The male accused apologized in the video to the community of Salmon Arm and his parents, as well as Myers’ family.
The young woman's trial is scheduled for November.
