(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

A man accused in a 2020 stabbing spree stowed away two knives before he returned to the scene.

A Kamloops jury was shown video footage Thursday of the accused, Michael Wayne Palmer, as he was taken from the police station to McArthur Island Park. He hid the knives near the riverbank and led police there on a cloudy March day in 2020.

Homicide investigator Cpl. Dave Marshall took Palmer to the park in a police vehicle with Palmer. The accused was allowed him to ride in the backseat without handcuffs because he was being cooperative. He was recorded in the backseat the entire time.

In the car, Palmer said he was trying to "maintain the peace" at his North Kamloops apartment, giving a similar account as the one he gave to the officer who arrested him on March 29, 2020.

Palmer is accused of attempted murder in the stabbings of Ian McKay, David Gronberg and Caleb Crookes. The fourth victim, Kevin White, died in the alleged attack and Palmer's is accused of his murder.

He's being tried before a 12-person jury in Kamloops, five years after the alleged stabbings at a North Kamloops apartment building.

The trial began June 2 and the jury has so far heard police evidence, with Cpl. Marshall returning to the stand for a second day as the jury was shown his recordings of Palmer.

The video showed Palmer in the backseat on one half of the screen and the front of the vehicle on the other, displaying their drive from downtown to the North Kamloops park. It was just weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic and there were almost no vehicles on the road during the midday drive.

Parked at McArthur Island, they waited for another officer to arrive and Marshall asked Palmer whether he'd ever been to jail. He also asked about Palmer's family and a recent hospitalization.

"I was locked in a box that I couldn't get out for a smoke — maybe once every two, three hours," Palmer said in the video shown to the jury during the morning court session, June 5.

It's not clear why he was hospitalized, but Palmer said in the video he was there for six months before he was released from the psychiatric ward at Royal Inland Hospital. He also said he had never been to jail, but he did suspect there was a chance he would be going.

Palmer was recorded claiming to both Marshall and the officer who arrested him that he was acting out of protection for his girlfriend because of crimes he said were occurring at the apartment complex.

Precisely why he hid the knives before returning to his apartment where the stabbings took place isn't clear, but he did suggest to police they were left for someone else to use for protection.

The trial is in its first of five weeks.

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