Mission mom tells court toddler found spent shell casing on road
A Mission mom testified in B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday about being out on a walk with her toddler a decade ago when the little girl picked up a shiny object she saw on the road.
“My first concern was my daughter putting something she shouldn’t into her mouth,” Lexi Richards told jurors and Justice Catherine Wedge at the trial of Jamie Bacon.
Richards described the object her 13-month old daughter picked up in the first or second week of January 2009 as a “cylinder” with writing on the bottom.
She testified that she thought the words were “semi-automatic” and believed it was some kind of ammunition.
Richards is one of several people who lived on Bench Avenue in Mission on Dec. 31, 2008 when drug trafficker Dennis Karbovanec was injured in a shooting that allegedly took place on the dead-end street.
Karbovanec was struck twice in the back and the head but was not seriously injured. He made his way to Mission Memorial Hospital, where he was treated and released.
Bacon is charged with one count of counselling another man to kill Karbovanec, his one-time associate in the drug trade.
Crown prosecutor Joe Bellows said in his opening submissions that several Bacon associates were present when Karbovanec was shot at the end of the Bench Avenue culde-sac.
Two of them, who can only be identified as AB and CD due to publication bans, are expected to testify that Bacon ordered the hit because he was upset that Karbovanec was using OxyContin and not focusing his attention on their drug business.
Richards admitted that some of her memories about what she found that day are vague, given how much time has passed.
Under cross-examination she was shown photographs depicting four spent shell casings and four live rounds.
She agreed that the items in the photos looked like what she found that day though the word on the bottom said “auto” and not “semi-automatic” as she had testified.
“Being shown this exhibit, I recognize the stamped lettering written in a semicircle. I can see that the wording is different and at this point I question whether I changed the word auto and somehow added the word semi,” she explained.
Richards said she gave the items to her neighbour Tami Bullock, who testified last week that she had called police on New Year’s Eve after hearing what she believed were gunshots on the street outside.
Bullock’s husband, Tony, took the stand Tuesday afternoon. He said he recalled Richards knocking on his door in January 2009 and handing his wife some brass objects.
“They looked like bullet casings,” he testified.
Later the same day, he went out to the street to look around and found more spent casings and live rounds. And he saw what appeared to be a walkie-talkie-type device sitting on top of a fire hydrant, he told jurors.
All of the items found by the neighbour and himself were turned over to police, Bullock testified.
The trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, is being held at the Vancouver Law Courts.