Boone told partner he was 'clean': Court
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OTTAWA — He was just 17 and chatting with a friend about his new boyfriend while riding the #95 bus.
“Please tell me it’s not Steven Boone,” his friend, Boone’s former roommate, said. “You can’t have sex with him - he’s HIV-positive and has STDs up the wall.”
“My heart dropped,” the 20-year-old student tearfully recalled at the trial of the man accused of trying to kill him by infecting him with HIV.
After they met online, the conversation flowed.
Once they met in person, Boone penetrated him anally nine times during a week-long sexual relationship in January and February 2010.
Each time Boone confirmed he was “clean.” He never used a condom.
Confronted, Boone denied it then turned apologetic and finally, vicious, texting “ur going down, kid.”
In April, the teen discovered he was indeed HIV positive. He felt “lost.”
“I hadn’t even turned 18, I was still in high school,” he recalled. “I still had so much I wanted to do. It felt like it was just taken away because I had a lapse in judgment and decided to trust somebody.”
He decided the right thing to do was to go to police.
“If you do something like this you are no longer human,” he said.
A prosecutor alleged in her opening address the Crown can prove Boone infected the young man - although he admitted he had sex with five other men after Boone, one without a condom.
Boone, 30, is charged with attempted murder and administering a noxious substance - HIV - to three men. He’s also charged with aggravated sexual assault against two of the men and three others.
The Crown alleges Boone, who has pleaded not guilty, exposed his sex partners to a “realistic possibility of infection with a fatal disease” during sex from December 2009 to April 2010.
Two other men testified Wednesday to hooking up with Boone after meeting him online.
A 25-year-old man said he had mutual oral sex in a car with Boone, who said he was “clean.” He was contacted by police after Boone’s arrest in May 2010 and told to get tested.
A 26-year-old man testified he had anal intercourse once with Boone, who said he was “clean.” Boone willingly used a condom.
Then the man saw Boone’s picture online with the question, “Did you sleep with this man?” and felt “sick.”
“I was in shock,” he said.
The trial continues Thursday.
megan.gillis@sunmedia.ca
Twitter: @ottawasun_megan
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