As a lawyer prepared to play an audio recording that captured some of the last minutes of his daughter’s life, Darris Dobersheck and his wife Hazel got up and quietly left the courtroom.
“I was given warning, that it wasn’t good, that it was a gruesome situation,” he said outside court on Tuesday.
“No good can come of hearing the last words of my daughter, or the last sounds of my daughter.”
His daughter Danielle Dobersheck was brutally beaten and killed in a motel room in Melfort, Sask., on March 10, 2024. She was 30 years old and a mother of three.
Her ex-partner Cody Chubey, 38, is on trial at Melfort Court of King’s Bench, charged with first-degree murder in her death.
Chubey and Dobersheck had been in a long-term relationship, but Dobersheck had left him and was moving on with her life, her family said.
However, that night, the two stayed together at the Carra Valla Inn.
In the room next door, a couple from B.C. was trying to sleep after attending an awards dinner for the Melfort Mustangs — the hockey team their son was playing on.
Garth and Donelle Olafson each testified separately on Tuesday. They both said they were awakened around 1 or 2 a.m. by the sounds of people arriving in the room next door. They heard partying sounds, but also arguing.
Later, the arguing turned physical, and Garth said he could hear a man beating up a woman.
They called the police. The first call was logged at 4:37 a.m. CST, with Donelle asking for a welfare check on the woman in the room next door. The dispatcher said she would send officers.
On Monday, court heard from the two officers who were dispatched. They were both on call, as there are no RCMP on active duty at that hour in Melfort, so they both were woken up from their sleep and had to get up, drive to the detachment, get their gear and take a cruiser to the motel.
They didn’t arrive at the motel until 5:05 a.m.
While Garth stood anxiously by the window, watching for the police to come, Donelle used her cellphone to record two videos that captured the audio coming from the room next door.
As she testified about what happened that night, Donelle was visibly upset on the stand, crying and wiping her eyes.
The audio captured sounds of a man yelling and a woman screaming.
It was difficult to make out many of the words, but at one point, the man said, “I’ll make your face like a f–king balloon and I’ll kill you.”
Garth said he heard the man tell the woman to go to the bathroom and clean herself up, but then it sounded like the man was angry that he couldn’t find his phone and there were noises near the bathroom area, banging and “a lot of commotion.”
At 4:56 a.m., the Olafsons called the police dispatch again and said they’d been listening to a man beat up a woman for 20 minutes. The dispatcher took their information and said she would pass it along to the officers.
After playing a recording of that call, Crown prosecutor Jennifer Souter asked Donelle if it accurately represented what had happened.
“I sound way too calm for what was happening,” Donelle responded. “I feel I was more frightened inside than what that call sounds.”
When the officers arrived 10 minutes later, Chubey let them into his motel room, which was covered in blood. Police found Danielle Dobersheck dead in the bathtub.
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. If you’re affected by family or intimate partner violence, you can look for help through crisis lines and local support services.
