Alberta girl says she was in 'zombie' state when family slain

An Alberta girl accused ofmurdering her familytestified Wednesday thather older boyfriend led the attack and she did nothing to stop him because she was in a dream-like state.

"I was like a zombie. I could barely function," the girl, 13, said at her first-degree murder trial in Medicine Hat. "It didn't even enter my mind to call 911."

The girl, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is accused of killing her parents and her eight-year-old brother in her Medicine Hat home in April 2006.

She first took the stand Tuesday and testified that the night of the attack, her 23-year-old boyfriendbroke into her home and attacked and killed her mother and father.

She said her boyfriend, 23-year-old Jeremy Steinke,then ordered her to stab her brother, which she did once, before her boyfriend slit the boy's throat.

On Wednesday, Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary repeatedly asked her why she didn't do something to stop the attack.

"You don't call an ambulance?" Cleary asked. "You don't call 911? You don't run to the neighbours?"

The girl, who spoke so quietly she was repeatedly asked to speak up,said she was in shock.

"I was practically sleepwalking," she replied at one point.

Cleary focused on the moment she stabbed her brother, first putting him in a chokehold.

"You don't say [to your brother], 'run, run out the back door,'" Cleary said. "You put your arm around his neck and you try to choke him. You didn't say no [to stabbing him]."

Many opportunities to ask for help

Cleary also pointed out that the girl had plenty of opportunities to ask for help.After the attack, the girlstole her mother's purse, called for a taxi, withdrew money from a bank machine at a nearby convenience store and went to her boyfriend's trailer, Cleary said.

During this time,the girlnever asked her neighbours, the convenience store clerk or the taxi driver for help, Cleary noted.

Cleary suggested the fact the girl didn't try to stop her boyfriend or to seek helpproves she and her boyfriend had planned to kill her family.

"If there wasn't a plan, you would have begged him to stop," Cleary said.

The girl denied this.

"There was no plan," she said quietly.

Shesaid, as she did on Tuesday, that she and her boyfriend had talked about killing her family prior to the attack because her parents didn't approve of their relationship.

However, the girl insisted both Tuesday and Wednesday that she was only joking and didn't mean any of it.

The defence maintains she did nothing to stop her boyfriend because she was just 12 at the time of the attack, and in shock.

The girl's boyfriend, who is now 24, is also charged with first-degree murder and will go on trial at a later date.