WINNIPEG -- A 19-year-old man told court Tuesday he “played dead” after another man fired a shotgun blast to the back of his head.

The man — who cannot be named because he was 16 at the time of the September 2007 shooting — said he and a friend were riding their bicycles down College Street sometime after 4 a.m. when “this guy came running out of a yard with a shotgun.”

The man said he heard one shot shatter a car window before a second shot sent him hurtling over his handlebars.

“I played dead so this guy would walk over me,” the man testified. “I remember him walking by with the gun and pointing at (my friend) as he rode away.”

The man’s accused attacker, 24-year-old Colin Mallett, has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, discharging a firearm with intent and six other firearm offences.

The man said he waited for his attacker to leave before running a short distance to his grandmother’s house where he collapsed.

The man’s mother testified she was waiting for her son to come home and looked out a window to see him fall off his bike and run to the house.

“He was bleeding, he wasn’t talking right, he was falling in and out of consciousness,” she said. “He was yelling he was going to die and I was doing my best to calm him down.”

The man said he suffers blurred vision and memory problems as a result of the shooting.

The man said just prior to the shooting, he and his friend were involved in another altercation in which another friend was beaten and attacked with bear spray.

dean.pritchard@sunmedia.ca