Millard dragged his pal Smich into truck theft, witness says
Man’s ex-girlfriend testifies at Bosma murder trial she begged him not to steal car
Dellen Millard gave Marlena Meneses “the creeps.”
Now 22, Meneses says that when they used to hang out, Millard — a friend of her boyfriend, Mark Smich — would slap her buttocks, make sexual comments and hit on her.
He made her uncomfortable “from Day1,” she said Tuesday, on the stand for a third day at the first-degree murder trial of Smich, 28, and Millard, 30, in the death of Ancaster dad Tim Bosma.
Meneses testified that she had expressed fears to her boyfriend that Millard was going to get him into trouble.
Bosma left his house on May 6, 2013, to take two men for a test drive of the pickup truck he was trying to sell online. He never returned. The Crown has said Bosma was shot in his truck and then burned in an incinerator outside Millard’s air hangar at the Region of Waterloo International Airport.
Meneses knew on May 6, 2013, that Smich and Millard had plans to steal a truck, the jury has heard. And the next morning, they told her that their “mission” had been successful.
She’d begged Smich not to do it, she testified.
She thought it was a stupid idea — Millard was rich, she figured. He had no reason to steal a truck.
Smich, on the other hand, needed money. Millard knew that, she said, and she thought he was “using” him.
“His (Millard’s) big thing in life was being out stealing . . . and getting younger boys to help him steal,” Smich’s lawyer, Thomas Dungey, suggested during his cross-examination.
Meneses agreed. Smich, an unemployed aspiring rapper, had participated in Millard’s “missions” in the past to make some cash, Meneses said — including the theft of a Bobcat from a construction site. She didn’t like it. While Millard’s lawyer, Nadir Sachak, had previously painted a picture of Smich as an abusive boyfriend who forced Meneses to sell drugs for him and tried to get her to work as a stripper, Dungey highlighted the positives of their relationship. Smich helped Meneses escape problems at home, the jury heard, and got her to stop using cocaine. She agreed with him that Smich was the first person who made her feel good about herself.
After Millard was arrested on May 10, 2013, Meneses says, Smich told her that it was Millard who had murdered Bosma, and that he was just there.
Sachak had suggested that she took his word because she loved him and “couldn’t bear to know the truth.” He also said this led her to lie.
But Dungey argued that she has consistently tried to be truthful to police and on the stand, despite some “mistakes” in her initial statement. She agreed. When Smich was handcuffed and arrested on May 22, 2013, he yelled at Meneses to keep quiet.
“But you didn’t listen to Mark, did you?” Dungey put to her on the stand Tuesday.
Meneses agreed she did not. She told police what Smich had told her — that Millard had shot and burned Tim Bosma. And that he’d gotten rid of the gun.
On Wednesday, Millard’s girlfriend, Christina Noudga — who is charged with being an accessory after the fact to Bosma’s murder — is expected to take the stand as the trial continues.