CHAT News File Photo

By Chris Brown

Court hears officer spoke with Hoefman early in investigation

Mar 10, 2021 | 12:53 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – A Medicine Hat police officer who came face to face with Robert Hoefman initially didn’t consider him a suspect.

Sgt. Jeffery Klick took the stand at Hoefman’s first-degree murder and extortion trial this morning. Hoefman is charged in the stabbing death of James Satre in October 2017. The Crown alleges Satre was a random victim chosen to further an extortion attempt of a man, who can’t be identified, unconnected to Satre.

Klick testified he responded to the College Drive area after a trail cam detected movement near the bag set up to lure a suspect in the extortion case.

Klick described seeing a man later identified as Robert Hoefman walking with a cane along College Drive. Minutes earlier Hoefman had been seen on cameras set up by police to monitor the bag.

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The man turned into the driveway of his mother-in-law’s house and that’s where Klick had a brief conversation with him.

Klick says from the way Hoefman presented himself he had no reason to think there was anything unusual.

Klick left Hoefman and his mother-in-law with two other officers who had arrived on scene.

The sergeant also testified that for the first few days, the investigations into the murder and the extortion letters were conducted separately.

But on Oct. 15, they were combined into one. At that time, Klick became more involved in the extortion investigation including assisting on the bag drop operation in the coulees along College Drive.

Later, Const. Dominic Scrimger took the stand. Scrimger was a member of the Forensic Identification Unit in October 2017. He assisted with gathering and processing a pair of letters thought to be connected to the extortion case in mid-October.

With previous experience on the tactical team he was also involved in the bag drop operation on Oct. 16.

After lunch, Const. Brian Brown detailed his time assisting with the investigation. That included getting dash cam footage of the days around the killing of Satre from a neighbour of his.