MANDEVILLE, Manchester — A woman who claimed she turned down relationship advances from deceased murder suspect Dave Wilson said he became a bad neighbour when she rejected him and started dumping garbage in her yard and even poisoned her dog.

In recalling her nightmare with Wilson, 54, who engaged the security forces in a four-hour stand-off at a Caledonia Road apartment on Tuesday, the woman, who requested anonymity, said she knew him for three years as a reserved person, but things  took a turn a year ago when he started displaying signs of aggression.

“My first interaction with him was about four years ago…it was just in passing, like hi and bye,” she said on Wednesday, a day after bullets disturbed the quiet mixed commercial and residential section of lower Caledonia Road.

She said Wilson expressed his interest in her a year ago at a nearby plaza, but when she turned him down, their interactions became bitter, even over the use of a garbage skip.

“Last year I went up there [plaza] to fix something with my boyfriend and Dave came up to me; basically him did a look me, I laughed it off. The first disagreement we had [was over] that garbage skip over there,” she pointed out.

“For years I have been dumping my one and two garbage bags over there [in the skip],” she added.

However, the woman said she was startled to wake up to seeing garbage strewn across her yard, and the culprit wasn’t her dogs, as her closed-circuit television (CCTV) captured Wilson emptying solid waste there.

“Mind you, I have been dumping garbage there for years. Last year he had an issue. My boyfriend put the garbage out at like 2:00 am, he [Dave] waited, looked out the window, took out the garbage, came onto the property, burst open the garbage, and spread it all over the yard. I have it on video,” she said.

“After that he got my number [and called] at like 3:00 am cursing expletives and threatening me. This was right after he [boyfriend] moved in with me, Dave started behaving like this,” the woman added in suggesting jealousy.

“Because we didn’t want any argument we decided to go to the dump [to dispose of our solid waste] and that was it. The [phone call] happened in May,” she explained.

Thinking that was the end of the bitterness, the woman was alarmed when things escalated three weeks ago when her shih-tzu Pomeranian mix was poisoned after she and her partner went out with friends.

“Ten minutes after we left home the camera picked up Dave walking in the yard with something in his hand and he threw it on the balcony. However, I didn’t notice it until the following morning,” she said.

“When we came in we saw one of the dogs behaving funny. We called the emergency vet. They tried to treat her and she ended up passing away. That is when I checked the camera and I noticed it,” she added.

The woman said she reported the matter to the police, but claimed she was given the runaround by cops even after Wilson reportedly admitted that he fed the dog.

“They only listened to what I had to say, didn’t write anything, and then they took his statement…that he ‘felt bad for the dog’. He felt ‘that they needed to be fed, because they were barking’,” she said.

“I asked them if they were going to charge him for trespassing on my property, because he came here without my permission. They were trying to shut me down and forcing me to take out a civil lawsuit. Eventually we got the report done when we complained to a higher ranking officer, and at that point they [police] came and took a report,” she added.

The woman said days later she saw signs that Wilson wasn’t well.

“I went back to the police station and I said, ‘I am in fear of my life. I feel like this man is going to hurt me’ and probably not even me, because if he is going to hurt an animal that didn’t do anything to him, he is going to hurt somebody. They laughed it off and said no it’s fine,” the woman claimed.

“We were in the process of bringing a case when all of this [shooting] happened,” she added.

The woman and her partner explained that following an autopsy on her pet a huge amount of poison was found in the dog’s system.

“Her [dog] brain was haemorrhaged. Her pancreas and her stomach was swollen. They said it was like a neurological toxin, it wasn’t like a regular rat poison,” the couple said.

“We went to the police to tell them the outcome to get some action, hoping they would check his premises or his car for the toxin. If they had checked they probably would have found the guns,” the woman said.

She also claimed that Wilson threatened her in the presence of the police

“He said, ‘Yuh p$%$, yuh call police on me, watch me and you.’ I said to the police, ‘Didn’t you hear him,’ and they were like, ‘No.’

Wilson met his demise on Tuesday during a tense four-hour stand-off at his apartment. The couple witnessed parts of the incident.

“The police went on the road looking for him. A patrol unit remained and all of a sudden I heard gunshots and saw police dodging bullets behind a van and everybody started running in after that for hours,” the woman said.

She insisted that she isn’t surprised that Wilson is accused of engaging the police in a shoot-out.

“He seemed to be the type of person to just snap for the smallest of things and snap excessively,” she said.

The shih-tzu Pomeranian mix Wilson was accused of poisoning. The animal subsequently died.