Witness says he knew men charged in murder

Claims he played basketball with duo

A key Crown witness in the firstdegree murder trial of two men in the death of Hamilton barber Neil Harris says he recognized them immediately while he waited to get his hair cut.

It was late afternoon on Feb. 18, 2016, when the witness — his name cannot be published under a court-ordered ban — sat on the couch in the barbershop at 600 Upper Wellington St. He was listening to music on his phone and played online poker, as Harris — who regularly cut the witness’s hair, and who he knew as “H” — was tending to a man in the chair and chatting about basketball.

That’s when two men appeared outside the glass door of the shop. The witness told court he recognized their faces before they pulled-on ski masks and entered.

He testified Thursday that the men were Odain Gardner and Erick Reid, both in their 20s, and who the witness knew from playing pickup basketball. He said that once inside the shop Reid stuck a handgun into his side: “He jammed me at the side of my waist and said ‘Don’t move, keep your head down.’”

Then he saw Gardner pull a gun on Harris, who swatted away Gardner’s arm before fleeing out the door and “pitching forward” on the sidewalk from being shot.

Surveillance video outside the shop shows that from the moment two men entered to the time they ran away, heading south, about 18 seconds elapsed. But the jury also heard that in the early hours of the investigation, the only suspect Hamilton police had was the witness, who was arrested shortly afterwards. Police video played in court showed a homicide detective telling the witness that “H” is dead, and: “You’ve been arrested for murder.”

“Murder?” the witness replies, appearing shocked.

At that point he described the shooting in the barbershop, but offered no information about who the attackers might have been. And then, five months later, when he was charged with possessing stolen property, detectives questioned him again about the homicide. This time, he identified Gardner and Reid in a photo lineup.

Under questions from assistant Crown attorney Brian Adsett, the witness said he delayed telling police because he had been “terrified” to speak up: “It’s what you learn growing up, you see but you don’t see, when stuff happens.”

Gardner’s lawyer, Jaime Stephenson, cross-examined the witness for much of the day. She challenged him on his changing version of events. “It’s not until the day you get arrested on your own charges that you decide to come clean, when you are in jeopardy of going to jail.”

She suggested that as the months passed after the homicide, he heard Gardner and Reid mentioned by others as suspects, and that was why he identified them to police — not because he saw them in the barbershop.

“Your associate (Harris) was tragically killed, and those (killers) should have consequences, right?” she said. “When you learned who you believed it was, that’s when you wanted to come forward.”

The witness shook his head in the negative.

“You’re disagreeing with me?” “Yes.”

The trial resumes Monday with further cross-examination of the witness.