City employees may not be called as witnesses in hockey dorm trial

Loren Reagan and Michael Elphicke are each accused of fraud over $5,000, theft over $5,000 and unauthorized management of a lottery scheme

Two employees of the City of Penticton may not have to testify next month at the trial of the men who initiated the failed hockey dormitory project.

Loren Reagan and Michael Elphicke are each accused of fraud over $5,000, theft over $5,000 and unauthorized management of a lottery scheme, and set for trial beginning Sept. 11 in B.C. Supreme Court.

The offences are alleged to have occurred in Penticton in July 2011 and relate to a planned European hockey trip for which some players’ parents handed over money to the Okanagan Elite Hockey Association, a business venture in which both accused were involved.

Some of the money was then allegedly used by Reagan to begin construction of the ill-fated dormitory for hockey players on Eckhardt Avenue in Penticton.

The trip never got off the ground, and although work began on the dormitory, it was shut down after Reagan failed to complete the purchase of the properties from the City of Penticton. The site has since been paved to serve as a parking lot for the South Okanagan Events Centre.

Crown counsel Todd Fullerton told a pre-trial conference Monday that, in the interest of saving court time, he may drop from his witness list both Ken Kunka, the city’s building and permitting manager, and Anthony Haddad, the city’s director of development services.

“They provide evidence that’s contextual, if you will, to the fraud as the Crown alleges it, but they don’t prove the elements of the offence or offences,” explained Fullerton.

A worker from a construction company that started the dormitory may also be axed. The trial is scheduled to last three weeks, but it won’t sit on Wednesday afternoons or Fridays, due to the need for Elphicke, who has end-stage kidney disease, to undergo dialysis.