Jonathan Robert Beaton, 25, was stabbed to death on New Year's Day in 2010. (Facebook)

A witness testifying at the second-degree murder trial of Robert Harris Lamb in Pictou said he saw Jonathan Robert Beaton get stabbed — the first of 17 witnesses to do so.

Chris Rogers told the court on Wednesday that he didn't know 25-year-old Beaton, but was one of the last people to talk to him just minutes before he was stabbed on Jan. 1, 2010.

Beaton died a few hours later in hospital.

Rogers was at the party at 123 College Street in Antigonish when the fights broke out just after midnight. He said he was making his way out of the house when he stopped and looked into the kitchen.

He testified he saw Beaton being stabbed.

When asked in court if he saw who stabbed Beaton, he replied, "Yes."

Stabbing details

The Crown asked Rogers how Beaton was being stabbed.

"Sideways motion, right arm going forward, two stabbing motions," he replied.

Then the Crown asked in what area of the body Beaton was stabbed.

"In the left abdomen, with a lot of force. It looked like he was putting everything he had onto it," Rogers told the court.

Rogers said the person he saw stabbing Beaton was a man he knew as Bubbles.

Court has heard in earlier testimony that Lamb's nicknames include Bubbles and Bubs.

Members of the Beaton family were crying during the testimony, while Lamb was shaking and looking uneasy, said the CBC's Kevin Harvey.

Under cross-examination, Rogers said he had consumed about a third of a bottle of rum that evening and he couldn't properly identify what Lamb was wearing during the initial police investigation and the preliminary hearing.

Dr. John Gillis testified he treated Lamb for a gash on his right hand at the emergency room of the Dartmouth General Hospital at about 4:30 a.m. on Jan 1.

Gillis testified that the five to seven-centimetre gash across Lamb's palm would have come from a sharp object such as a knife.

Several 911 calls were played in court Wednesday and all were similar in nature — most of the people making the calls sounded like they were panicking, said Harvey.

One 911 caller said the people seen with the knives were from Halifax.

Lamb and two other men from the Halifax area attended the party that night.