After stealing $113 in fuel for the stolen truck he'd been driving, Joshua Mitchell told a homicide detective he was shocked to see the gas station attendant chasing after him, but said he never intended to harm her.

"What were you thinking at that point?" asked homicide Det. Rey Bangloy.

"This bitch is nuts," said Mitchell.

A four-hour videotaped interview between Mitchell and Bangloy was played for the jury at the accused's second-degree murder trial at the Court of Queen's Bench in Calgary on Wednesday.

In a sparse interview room at Calgary police headquarters on June 10, 2015, Bangloy gave Mitchell an Advil for his headache, a McDonald's meal and tissue, eventually eliciting a confession out of him.

Mitchell had been arrested the day before the interview, which was two days after Rashidi was killed in the hit and run.

At the end of his interview, Mitchell wrote a letter of apology to Rashidi's husband and six-year-old son:

"I'm really sorry this had to happen to your family. It shouldn't have happened. We tried to avoid injury to anyone. I feel so bad that this happened. I've never hurt anyone physically in my life. This is the first. I can't live with myself knowing what I've done to your family."

Joshua Mitchell penned this apology letter to Maryam Rashidi's family after admitting he killed her in a gas-and-dash gone wrong. (Court exhibit )

Just four shifts into her job as a gas station attendant at the Centex station on 16th Avenue N.W., Rashidi chased the burgundy Ford F350 after it drove off without paying for $113 in fuel.

Rashidi had taken the job because she and her husband both lost their engineering jobs just months after moving to Calgary from Iran with their six-year-old son.

'I told her to move'

Video surveillance played earlier in the trial shows a young man fuelling up at the Centex before hopping in the truck. Mitchell admitted to being the driver who took off without paying for gas as his passenger shouted at him to drive faster.

"'Go, go, go, go, there's somebody following us,' so I hammer the gas," said Mitchell. "He told me some bitch was chasing us down."

As traffic was stopped at a red light on 16th Avenue, Rashidi ran up to it.

Maryam Rashidi and her six-year-old son Koorosh are seen in this family photo. (Submitted by the family)

Witnesses testified Rashidi began to bang on the window and hood of the truck before climbing onto its hood in an effort to get the driver to pay.

"I kept reversing to go around and she kept f--king jumping in front of the car," Mitchell told Banglow. "I told her to move."

'We didn't want to hurt anybody'

Mitchell said he and his friend who was a passenger in the truck had two options: bear spray the woman who was chasing them or try to get away.

"We tried for option two because we didn't want to hurt anybody," said Mitchell.

Mitchell said he slammed on the brakes trying to get Rashidi off the hood, but then blacked out, a claim Bangloy said he didn't believe.

That's the moment when witnesses described watching as Rashidi's foot got caught in the wheel well and she was pulled under the truck as it drove over her body.

160 km/h getaway

Unbeknownst to Mitchell, passersby — including a doctor, nurse and firefighter — attended to Rashidi as the two young men in the truck took off.

"We were going 160 [km/h] down the road."

Eventually, Mitchell said, the pair parked in an alley near the Brentwood C-Train station and ran to a friend's house, where they spent the next couple of days.

Mitchell said he considered turning himself in, but eventually police showed up at the door of the home where he'd been staying.

'I could rock that truck forever'

Mitchell spent several minutes of the interview bragging about the stolen truck he said he'd been driving for a week and a half at the time of the incident.

"That thing can go 250 K," said Mitchell. "This guy put money into that truck ... over 100 grand."

"I could rock that truck forever ... it turned on a dime going 160."

At several points during the interview, Mitchell teared up.

"So how do you feel about this whole thing?" asked Bangloy.

"Pretty bad," said Mitchell. "I actually wanted to be a cop."

Bangloy is the 14th of 24 witnesses who will be called by prosecutors Jonathan Hak and James Thomas. He will be cross-examined by defence lawyer Kim Ross on Thursday morning.