It’s not known whose blood was pooled under the door of the North Kamloops apartment unit in which Heather Hamill lived with common-law husband Robert Balbar when she was slain six years ago.

Wednesday marked the third day of the first-degree murder trial in which Balbar is accused of slaying Hamill, whose body was found on Aug. 1, 2003, snagged on a tree in the North Thompson River near Indian Point.

Court heard from a Crown witness — her name is withheld to protect her identity — who, with her husband, lived in the Oak Street apartment building the summer Hamill was killed.

The woman said she would go down the hall to “Smiley’s” — Balbar’s longtime nickname — and buy marijuana from him on a daily basis.

“I would go straight into his [Balbar’s] bedroom, get what I was getting and leave,” she said, adding the apartment was always messy, strewn with bike parts — which she said Balbar collected — a number of tools and drug paraphernalia, such as pipes for crack cocaine and crystal meth.

“Just everything you could possibly imagine,” she said.

One morning in the summer in 2003, the neighbour knocked on apartment 15 and did not receive the usual call to enter.

Instead, she told the court, Balbar opened the door just wide enough to poke his face out.

She said he told her he did not have any drugs to sell before slamming the door in her face.

Still in her pajamas, the mother of five turned to return to her unit when she saw the blood.

“There was blood on the floor coming out from underneath the door — a blob about this big,” she said, making a circle the size of a softball with her hands.

“Then I saw the drops leading down the hall, down the stairs and then outside the door.”

Not thinking much about the stains, the neighbour said she and her husband left and, when they returned, there was no trace of the blood — instead, they were assaulted by the powerful odour of bleach.

“I didn’t think anything of it [the blood] because, in the apartment [building] I lived in, it happened a lot,” she said, noting it was not uncommon for fights to break out or for residents to return home, bloody, after a scuffle.

“It stunk very harshly of bleach,” she said.

From that day forward, she said, “Smiley” did not embody his moniker.

“He changed after that morning. We rarely saw him — just once in a blue moon.”

Despite the woman’s detailed testimony of that morning in 2003, defence lawyer John Gustafson noted she could not remember the months she and her husband lived in the apartment building, nor did she have a recollection of the month she last saw Hamill.

“Your daily pot use, probably not that great for the memory, wouldn’t you say?” Gustafson asked.

“No,” the witness replied, “ I guess not.”

Gustafson also noted the woman did not go to police until after Balbar was arrested in 2007, arguing it would be difficult for her to “reconstruct what happened” from events four years prior.

The trial continued on Thursday, with the Crown calling other friends and family of Hamill to the stand, along with another expert witness.

The jury will stand down today (Friday) and Monday.

The trial will resume on Tuesday, Sept. 29.

Balbar has pleaded not guilty.