Streetcar driver testifies on Yatim’s final moments
Chad Seymour asked if he could do anything to help; 18-year-old said he’d like to call his dad
Hands clasped and looking a little nervous, the TTC driver who had the last conversation with 18-year-old Sammy Yatim before he was shot eight times on an empty streetcar by Const. James Forcillo took the stand Monday afternoon.
Forcillo has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and attempted murder.
Chad Seymour, 31, had been a TTC operator for only 13 months when, shortly before midnight on July 26, 2013, he heard terrified screaming on the Dundas streetcar. Moments later he heard: “He has a knife.”
A “panicked, worried” crowd of passengers jostled by the front doors as Seymour brought the streetcar to a halt before opening the doors, he testified.
He turned his head around and, for the first time, saw Yatim walking forward at a normal pace, slim four-inch knife held in his outstretched right hand.
“Ideally I would have liked to get off the streetcar, too,” he said. “It was tough at that moment without pushing someone aside.”
When he did have a chance to leave, Yatim was “about five feet away,” Seymour said. “I didn’t feel comfortable with my back being towards a person with a knife.”
As seen on the TTC security videos that have been played to the jury, Seymour remained on the streetcar.
He heard Yatim yelling: “I’ll f---ing kill you, I’ll kill you,” in the direction of the passengers who’d fled via the front doors.
In cross-examination, Seymour agreed with Forcillo’s lawyer, Peter Brauti that he had previously described Yatim’s tone of voice as “go ahead and try me” and a “challenge.”
Yatim seemed to notice Seymour for the first time only when Seymour decided to engage him in conversation, by asking him if everything was OK.
“Everyone is trying to kill me, man. Even n----rs at the station trying to kill me,” he said Yatim replied.
Seymour said he asked Yatim: “Can I do something for you, can I get you anything?” Yatim said he wanted a phone. Seymour said he told Yatim: “I don’t have a phone on me, but I can get you a phone. Who do you want to call?”
Yatim said he wanted to call his father.
“We’ll call your dad. Have a seat, we’ll get you a phone,” Seymour said he told Yatim. “Everything will be fine.”
At some point, Yatim did sit down in the front passenger seat, a cigarette in his mouth. He also told Seymour that this “was not a hostage situation,” Seymour said.
Meanwhile, Seymour said he was trying to position himself safely by the front doors of the streetcar, ready for the “worst-case scenario.”
“I decided to stay on the streetcar because I was engaging in conversation,” Seymour said.
“I knew that with him sitting down, with myself in danger, nobody else was in danger.”
He knew the police were coming — he’d hit the emergency buttons on the streetcar that alerted both police and the TTC, as well as triggered a microphone to start recording.
“We both saw the cruisers at about the same time,” Seymour said.
“(Yatim) jumped out of his seat and yelled ‘F--- you, f--- you’ and came at me . . . I jumped off the streetcar.”
The knife was still in Yatim’s hand, he said.
He stood watching from the sidewalk as Forcillo and his partner arrived. He heard the shouts of “drop the knife” and Yatim’s response: “You’re a p---y.”
“It was kind of like disbelief for me. I put my hands to my face, like, why?” Seymour said.
He started walking west to give the police more space. He said he did not speak to the police and they did not speak to him or anyone else that he saw.
He stopped and turned to look at the streetcar. Shortly after, he heard three gunshots. He started walking again. He says he heard the next six shots about 45 seconds to a minute later. In reality, according to the videos, it was just under six seconds later.
The jury has heard that Yatim died on the streetcar from a bullet wound to the heart.
Seymour testified that he saw cellphone videos of the shooting on YouTube about three hours later.
On Monday, the jury was also given further insight into Forcillo’s defence.
The jury has already heard, in the defence’s opening statement, that they will argue Forcillo was acting in self-defence.
“(Yatim) was in this for the fight all the way,” Brauti said.
In cross-examining one of the SIU investigators, Steven Adam, Brauti asked whether the SIU looked into Yatim’s state of mind leading up to the streetcar incident.
“Did he seem upset or in despair over the way things were going in his personal life?” Brauti asked. Adam said they did not investigate that.
Brauti also questioned whether the SIU investigated how Yatim felt after a close female friend of his moved to Australia a week before the incident. Adam said they did not look into that.
Producing a chart of criminal offences, Brauti asked Adam which of them he believed there would be reasonable grounds to charge Yatim with.
Adam agreed to the charges of involving possession of a weapon and indecent exposure.
However, he did not agree to the charges of attempted murder, resisting or wilfully obstructing a police officer, assault or sexual assault.
“Yatim had committed numerous criminal offences that could result in him being in jail for a very long time,” Brauti said.
But, while nothing prevented him from getting off the streetcar before the police got there, he sat down and waited, Brauti said.
“There is no reason for him not to flee,” he said. When the police arrived at the scene, “the first thing he does is show them he is armed with a deadly weapon.”
The trial continues.