A B.C. Supreme Court judge finished hearing evidence Thursday, Dec. 5 in the trial of two men charged with with aggravated assault and break and enter after a 2022 machete attack in a Prince George hotel.
A Crown prosecutor and lawyers for Kerridge Andrew Lowley, 49, and Dakota Rayn Keewatin, 31, will reconvene for up to three days — Jan. 28, 30 and 31 — for closing submissions. The dates are expected to be confirmed on Monday, Dec. 9.
Defence lawyers Jason LeBlond for Keewatin and Terry La Liberté for Lowley told Justice John Gibb-Carsley that they would not call any evidence. After hearing the closing submissions, Gibb-Carsley will decide the accused's fates based on Crown prosecutor Andrea Norlund’s case, which concluded with testimony from a Prince George RCMP drug investigation specialist.
Const. Daniel Farwell began his testimony in the afternoon of Wednesday, Dec. 4 and finished mid-morning Thursday, Dec. 5.
He told the court that the first name of the victim of the Aug. 11, 2022 machete attack appeared on a drug dealing “scoresheet.”
Farwell was introduced as an expert in the methods of use, sale, distribution, packaging, pricing, trafficking and concealment of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil and methamphetamine. He said his expertise, since 2017, includes investigations of street-level dealers selling a tenth of a gram all the way to “kilo-level drug traffickers.”
Farwell said drug scoresheets are commonly found in the course of an investigation. They are “essentially like a business ledger,” with a tally of money owed and money paid, quantities of drugs, and a record of profit and loss. Scoresheets are as unique as each drug trafficking operation. They may be on paper — even as rudimentary as the back of a napkin — or in more-sophisticated form on a digital device. Whatever the format, they are subject to analysis and the information recorded is not always obvious to the reader.
“In order to know exactly what was written and how it was written and why it was written, we would have to speak to the author,” Farwell said.
In the case of the scoresheet with the victim’s first name, Farwell said his analysis concluded that the “person would have incurred more debt, paid some of that debt off, and then it looks like actually paid a little bit more of that off, with that last payment probably being around $40 and then the amount owing still would be $1,800.”
The trial earlier heard that police found the man emerging from the Econo Lodge City Centre Inn with a bloody arm, in shock and denial about his injuries. Police treated him until ambulance paramedics arrived and rushed him to the University Hospital of Northern B.C.
Orthopedic specialist Dr. Ali Bakkai testified Tuesday, Dec. 3 that the man was an “advanced trauma, life support” patient who required emergency surgery for multiple deep lacerations, nerve, muscle, tendon and bone injuries.
Under cross-examination, Farwell was asked about drug paraphernalia that appears in crime scene photographs. He was shown one of a bathroom counter in room 255 of the Econo Lodge. He identified a glass object with a blackened end as a pipe used to smoke either methamphetamine or fentanyl. Other photographs of a small desk showed torch-style lighters and digital scales.
“That's further supportive of the idea that there's likely trafficking occurring there, would that be fair to say?” LeBlond asked.
“Yes, multiple scales are common in drug trafficking investigations,” Farwell said.
