Intruder killed in stabbing, but suspect released
Suspect, 24, released without charges minutes before he was to appear in court
Brian Scollard died while trying to steal another man’s weed.
It was just after 9 p.m. on Wednesday, and Scollard, 36, along with an accomplice, knocked at the door of a house on Covington Place, normally a quiet street.
Armed with a hammer and bear spray, they stormed in, allegedly looking for weed. But their target, a man in his early 20s, fought them off and knifed Scollard several times, according to the police investigation into the home invasion gone wrong.
Someone at the home called 911 and the 24-year-old man was taken into police custody.
Homicide detectives initially treated the targeted man as a homicide suspect but released him without charges minutes before he was scheduled to appear in court.
The man, who turned himself in to police Wednesday night, has expressed relief, according to his defence lawyer, Paolo Giancaterino.
“He’s looking forward to putting this behind him,” Giancaterino said.
Scollard, who died of his injuries and was pronounced dead in hospital, had previous assault and drug-related convictions.
Police will continue to investigate his death as the city’s 10th homicide.
On Thursday morning, patrol officers along Covington Place had blocked off the residential crescent on either side of the house where the homicide occurred.
When one neighbour heard on the news that there had been a homicide, she told a reporter she immediately thought of that house, which she said was rented by four or five men in their 20s or early 30s. The tenants, who stood out on what’s otherwise a family-oriented street, had newer vehicles but used a bedsheet as a curtain, she said.
“I said, ‘It’s the guys.’ It’s such a quiet street. No one knows them. They’re not connected to the street. They don’t chat.”
Several other neighbours, out walking their dogs or heading to work, said they had suspected there was drug activity at the home.
“There were always cars going in and out,” one said. “Nice cars.”
On Wednesday night, one longtime resident said he saw his street lit up by the lights of about a dozen police cars as paramedics appeared to be performing CPR on a man in the house’s cluttered garage. He wondered if their efforts were in vain because the man was loaded into an ambulance but it didn’t race away.