A 911 emergency operator listened while Crystal Ann Tracey loudly told her ex‑partner Irving John Hastey, "Go!" on December 24, 2018, according to facts presented in Saint John Court of Queen's Bench on January 22 at Hastey's sentencing hearing on a charge of manslaughter. Tracey placed this call at 11:16 a.m. asking for the RCMP to remove her former partner, then 55, who showed up at her 16 Schoodic St. apartment in St. Stephen on Christmas Eve, her 52nd birthday. Then the woman screamed at Hastey, "Go! Just leave," according to the recording replayed before Justice Darrell Stephenson.
     "Hello! Hello! Crystal? Hello!" the operator interjected. "Stop!" the woman's voice said. "I've had enough," a male voice said. "Please stop! Stop!" the woman said. Then she yelled, "Go!" Loud noises followed but no more voices.
     The RCMP, with headquarters just around the corner at the bottom of Hawthorne Street, arrived at 11:22 a.m. After breaking down two doors to enter the upstairs apartment, they found Tracey and Hastey on their backs, she mostly in the kitchen, he in the bathroom, feet to feet. He was unconscious, she conscious but unable to speak, bleeding from stab wounds, a knife still stuck in her chest.
     Emergency responders tried chest compressions and defibrillators, but she was declared dead at the scene by 11:43 a.m. He was taken to the Charlotte County Hospital and transferred to the Saint John Regional Hospital. There was no thoracic surgeon on call in Saint John on Christmas Eve so Hastey was taken to Moncton.
     Forensic analysis indicated alcohol in Tracey's system, and alcohol and other drugs including methamphetamine in Hastey's system, Crown Prosecutor Patrick Wilbur said in court.
     Hastey was charged with second degree murder but on November 28 pleaded guilty to the lesser included offence of manslaughter. On January 22, Wilbur and defence counsel Brian Munro jointly recommended a sentence of 10 years in prison minus time in custody since his arrest more than a year ago, plus a lifetime ban on possession of weapons and ammunition and an order to provide DNA samples. Stephenson reserved his decision until January 27 at 11 a.m.
     Marilyn Little read from her victim impact statement that she went to the apartment after the RCMP informed her that her sister had died. She found the turkey cooked and the stuffing done with just the potatoes and vegetables to do. Tracey's sister Valerie Tubbs said in her victim impact statement that she bought her the pot to cook the potatoes plus an artificial Christmas tree the day before. Both said they had feared that something like this would happen to their sister Crystal at the hands of her common‑law partner of 30 years.
     "I predicted this 20 years ago, but when the police arrived at my door and asked me if Crystal was my sister and I said, 'Yes,' he said, 'You should go in and sit down.' He told me Crystal was deceased," Little related. "My heart was broken," and Christmas will never be the same, she said.
Tubbs had planned to visit her sister on Christmas Eve, her birthday, but her husband told her the police were there and she found out about the death, she said in her victim impact statement. "All I could say was, 'He did it,'" she said. "There is now a dark cloud that hovers over Christmas Eve and her birthday forever."
     She expressed resentment that her sister moved into an apartment, living on welfare with old furniture and no pot to cook potatoes for her children's Christmas dinner, while Hastey kept their home in Little Ridge.
     Both sisters expressed concern for Tracey's children, hoping that the domestic violence stops with them. Hastey deprived his children of both parents by killing their mother, Tubbs said. "This is the legacy you've left for your children. No matter where they go in life, no matter what they accomplish, this will always be the burden they were made to carry," Tubbs said in words directed at the man in the prisoner's dock.
     Stephenson offered Hastey a chance to speak before he passes sentence. Speaking in a soft voice, he said, "I'd just like to say I'm sorry."