MYSTERY DUO BLAMED
On stand, Picard insists he isn’t the killer
Adam Picard said he stood shaking and terrified as two mysterious olive-skinned men with thick foreign accents shot and killed Fouad Nayel with Picard’s shotgun in an isolated rendezvous in June 2012.
Testifying in his own defence for the second day, Picard described a Hollywood thriller-style meet-up on a remote dirt road near Calabogie, where Nayel told Picard he intended to buy a kilogram of cocaine from the mystery men.
It was an unplanned side trip for Picard, who said Nayel had originally asked for a lift to Petawawa, where he was to meet a dope dealer.
Yet here they were, Nayel with $27,000 in cash and 17 pounds of weed he planned to trade the mystery men for the cocaine.
But the meet-up didn’t go as planned. Picard testified he watched from a few feet away while Nayel and one of the men argued. The mystery men then grabbed Picard’s shotgun, which was lying on the seat of his Jeep, wrestled with Nayel and threw him to the ground.
“Fouad said, ‘Don’t worry I’ll get your money,’” Picard told the court. “But the guy said, ‘It’s too late for that.’ ”
The man then shot Nayel once in the front, then again in the back as Nayel tried to crawl away.
“I was cowering in front of my Jeep,” Picard testified. “I was frozen. I thought of running. I didn’t know what to do.”
Picard’s account is at odds with what the Crown alleges really happened: that Picard had arranged to buy the marijuana from Nayel, lured him to an isolated spot, killed him and stole the drugs.
In Friday’s testimony, delivered under questioning from defence lawyer Rosellen Sullivan, Picard described how the mystery men threatened him after Nayel’s death.
“He came back to me with a shovel. He threw it at my feet and said, ‘Start walking.’
“We walked into the bush and then he said, ‘Start digging.’
Picard said he started to dig — “It seemed like forever” — when one of the men walked back to the Jeep, retrieved Picard’s driver’s licence and took a photo of it with his cellphone.
“He said, ‘You’ve just inherited Fouad’s debt,’ ” Picard testified.
The men also warned Picard not to talk, “or you and your whole family are dead.”
Picard was allowed to get in his Jeep and drive away, he testified. He said he heard a loud bang in the back as he was leaving and later realized the men had tossed the shotgun into the Jeep’s trailer.
After that, Picard testified that he lived in fear, worried that the men would come and harm his girlfriend or that he would be arrested and charged with drug trafficking. He’d been called by Nayel’s family in the days after Nayel’s disappearance and soon after that by police.
By the end of June, the stress and fear had him contemplating suicide.
“I was ready to take my own life,” Picard said. “I knew I was going to be charged with drug trafficking. I knew Heather (his girlfriend) was going to leave me.”
He said he felt shame as he stared down the barrel of his gun.
“I had been begging for my life and here, two weeks later, I was ready to take my life.”
It was an account that assistant Crown attorney Dallas Mack wasn’t buying. If Picard was so fearful of the mystery men who threatened to kill him, Mack argued in cross-examination Friday afternoon, why didn’t he move or change his phone number? Mack noted that Picard bought and operated a chip truck after Nayel’s killing and began a driveway-sealing
They left you with all this evidence against them. They kill a guy, then they let the guy who watched it all go. That’s crazy!
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“You’re not hiding. You’re not protecting yourself. You’re out there in the public,” Mack said in an often testy exchange with Picard.
It made no sense that the mystery men would put their fingerprints on Picard’s licence, then give it back to him, Mack said. It made no sense that they tossed the murder weapon back into Picard’s Jeep, he added.
“They left you with all this evidence against them. They kill a guy, then they let the guy who watched it all go. That’s crazy!” Mack said. “Yes it is,” Picard agreed. “They don’t exist!” Mack snapped back.
The trial in Ontario Superior Court of Justice resumes Monday before Justice Kevin Phillips and a 12-person jury.