The trail by Guerin Creek Manor close to where CJ Fowler's body was discovered

(JESSICA WALLACE / iNFOnews.ca)

KAMLOOPS — The walking trail by a ravine near Guerin Creek was often littered with beer cans, bottles and garbage, but three dog walkers, a hydro worker and a letter carrier noticed something out of place the morning of Dec. 5 before a 16-year-old girl’s body was found in the neighbourhood.

The body was CJ Fowler — a teen who travelled to Royal Inland Hospital for a drug reaction the evening earlier. At the hospital, she discovered she was pregnant.

Fowler’s boyfirend, Damien Taylor, is charged with second degree murder. The pair travelled to Kamloops from Terrace the week before Fowler was found dead. Today, Sept. 30, was the third day of his trial in Kamloops Supreme Court.

“There’s always garbage and cans and stuff in that area,” Kyle Kuzyk, one of the dog walkers, told the jury of the ravine next to the Guerin Creek Manor apartment building at 751 Grandview Terrace.

Kuzyk said he took his dog Archie for a walk down a trail near his apartment on Dalgleish Drive, a road nearby. The trail linked to Grandview Terrace, he said, and it was where he noticed a bag of clothing.

"I gave it a little kick to have a look and see what it was,” he said. But it was on his second walk with Archie where he discovered something much more suspicious in the brush behind a concrete barrier by Guerin Creek Manor.

“My dog was just sniffing in that area,” he said. "The way it looked, it looked kind of like a pile of clothing. It was tough to tell what I was looking at. I had never really seen a dead body before."

Upon closer inspection, he noticed more details.

“There was a piece of concrete on her chest,” he said adding the body was darker skinned, female, had bare arms and was wearing a paper bracelet on her wrist.

Julie Buie, a B.C. hydro worker, was in the area around the same time to read meters and said she suspected something after noticing a duffel bag and a makeup bag strewn on the trail.

“There was a guy with his dog and a letter carrier and they were kind of looking at me and looked very confused,” Buie testified. “From seeing the duffel bag I thought, what else did they see? They said 'we see a body, we see a dead body.'"

Buie crossed the cement barrier with Kuzyk, she said.

“I thought it was a mannequin at first,” she said. After calling 9-1-1, Buie said she confirmed the person was deceased.

“There was a big big chunk of concrete on her head and there was a lot of blood,” she said.

The Crown’s case against Taylor is expected to conclude this week.

The map of Fowler's locations throughout the evening of Dec. 4 to where her body was discovered Dec, 5, 2012

(MARSHALL JONES / iNFOnews.ca)

To contact a reporter for this story, email Glynn Brothen at gbrothen@infonews.ca, or call 250-319-7494. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.

News from © iNFOnews, 2015