Jury hears police interview with co-accused recorded days after fatal bush party shooting

Testimony at a London courthouse continued Wednesday, as London Police Detective Jim MacLachlan took the stand in the seventeenth day of evidence in the case of the murder of Josue Silva.

Just five days after the 18-year-old was shot and killed, Det. MacLachlan said that he called Carlos Guerra Guerra to police headquarters for a recorded interview.

In the recorded interview – which the jury heard in court on Wednesday – the accused told the investigator that he attended the bush party off of Pack Road in southwest London on July 30, 2021 after he got a call to come out from the other co-accused in the case, Emily Altmann.

Guerra Guerra appeared calm when he spoke about a phone conversation he had with Altmann, "When I picked up the phone she (Altmann) was very frantic, she was shaken up and drunk and I could just barely understand what she was telling me."

He went on to say, "She was telling me there was a group of people that were harassing her, and she wanted me to come and get her out of the situation."

An undated image of the accused in the Silva trial, Altmann and Guerra Guerra outside the London courthouse. (Nick Paparella/CTV News London)

In the interview, Guerra Guerra said that when he made it out to the bush party with three other friends, he located Altmann, "When I see Emily she's like I need to go back into the forest because I think I dropped something, I was like 'Are you serious?"'

He said they walked down a path, "All of a sudden there's people that come out of the bushes... we're trying to back up... a fight breaks out... I turn my back and then all of a sudden I hear pop I just started running, I just ran out of the forest so fast, I did not stick around."

According to Guerra Guerra, he quickly left but didn’t see where Altmann went.

Emergency crews would eventually show up to find Silva suffering from a gunshot wound to the stomach. He would later be pronounced dead in hospital.

A short time after the interview with Det. McLachlan, police arrested and charged the 23-year-old Guerra Guerra and 22-year-old Altmann. They have each plead not guilty to second degree murder and assault causing bodily harm.

Later in the day when talking about the altercation that took place, Guerra Guerra told the officer, "I'm not too sure if they uttered any threats...I don't think they personally threatened me."