A Lumby man who is accused of murdering his ex-wife has had his trial moved from Vernon to Kamloops in a move that has the victim’s family frustrated with the system.
Vitali Stefanski is accused of murdering his ex-wife, Lumby mother Tatjana Stefanski, in April 2024. He appeared in Vernon Supreme Court Wednesday, Nov. 26, for a hearing in which his lawyer requested the change in the location of his trial.
The judge presiding over the hearing granted the move to the Kamloops courthouse on the basis that Vitali would not be able to reasonably participate in his trial if the trial was held in Vernon, according to the BC Prosecution Service.
Vitali’s trial was scheduled to commence in May 2026, and the Prosecution Service says the original trial dates have been preserved. A three-week voir dire, or trial within a trial, will begin on April 13 — the two-year anniversary of Tatjana’s death. The trial proper is set to commence on May 25 and last for five weeks.
Jason Gaudreault, Tatjana’s partner, said he was blindsided by the decision to move the trial. He told The Morning Star he hadn’t been made aware that Wednesday’s court hearing was taking place until minutes before it began. He was even more surprised to learn the court had acquiesced to the demands of Stefanski’s lawyer, Tony Lagemaat.
Gaudreault said he was informed that the trial would be moved because Stefanski is unable to access files related to his trial in Vernon and would be able to do so at the correctional facility in Kamloops, where he is being held. That the trial would be unfair to Vitali if he were unable to take part in it by reviewing files with his lawyer was the reason behind the decision to move the trial, Gaudreault said.
The prevailing precendent in the B.C. court system is to hold trials in the community in which the offence took place.
The decision poses the question: if Vitali’s trial would be unfair because he couldn’t access documents while in Vernon, could any trial located in Vernon be deemed unfair on the same basis?
The relocation of the trial is a frustrating decision for Gaudreault, who said he and his family, as well as likely more than a dozen witnesses, will now have to commute to Kamloops for the lengthy trial.
Gaudreault has tirelessly attended most every hearing in the case to date. He’ll have to drive nearly two hours to Kamloops to do so now.
“I am outraged,” Gaudreault said, while wondering why the court wouldn’t commute Vitali to and from Vernon during the trial instead of having scores of witnesses and family members do the commuting.
He’s incensed by what he called a lack of communication from Crown counsel about the possibility that the trial location could be moved.
“This was a huge impact on Tatjana’s case and they never notified me at all what was happening,” he said.
By the time Vitali’s trial begins in May, it will be roughly two years since he was arrested on a charge of murder. Around that time, it came out that police had released Vitali from custody the day after Tatjana was killed, a decision that sparked fear and anger in the community.