Accused in Allison Moosehunter death testifies that he is a drug dealer, not a murderer

Ivan Martell testified at his first-degree murder trial that he was out selling cocaine the night Allison Moosehunter died and that he had no idea who stabbed, beat and strangled the 28-year-old.

"Did you commit murder?" defence lawyer Patrick McDougall asked Wednesday.

"No, I did not," Martell replied.

"Did you use [this knife] to harm Allison Moosehunter?" McDougall asked, referring to a photo of a knife.

"No, I did not."

Moosehunter died March 3, 2020, in the basement suite she shared with Martell, described throughout the judge-alone trial at Court of King's Bench as her on-again, off-again boyfriend.

Martell testified that the pair had recently reconciled the night that she died. He said the pair went out for dinner and then were hanging out together back at the Hampton Village suite.

"I was getting calls to go meet people," Martell said.

He told McDougall that he sold cocaine in small amounts, supplied by a friend that he had met the last time he had been in jail. Martell said that enough people called that night that, around midnight, he arranged to be picked up by a friend to go deliver drugs.

Martell said Moosehunter was alive when he left.

Martell testified that he spent most of the night making drug rounds to customers who called his pre-paid cellphone, finally "nodding off" at a friend's house around dawn. He said that he was using painkillers recreationally at the time.

"I woke up noonish and logged onto Facebook. I saw my face all over, and it scared me," he said.

"They said I was armed and dangerous, and wanted for murder."

Martell said he did not carry weapons and had never been threatened by anyone else in the drug trade. He had at one time been a member of the Terror Squad, but left the street gang, he said.