Officer emerges as trial’s good guy
WARNING: This column contains graphic content.
How fortuitous indeed to have a friend when in blotto-faced need.
Const. Sameer Kara, one of three Toronto cops charged with sexual assault against a female parking enforcement officer, was unquestionably booze-blitzed to the gills on the evening of Jan. 15, 2015.
Serially up-chucking he was, spewing hither and yon as a group of 51 Division off-duty officers wound their way from bar to bar on “Rookie Buy Night.”
So decent and arm-around was Officer Elias Tissawak that he volunteered to take Kara back to the hotel room reserved by a colleague earlier in the day, after helping the inebriate off his knees in the washroom, where Kara had been communing with a toilet bowl.
“I said, ‘I’ll take care of him,’ ” Tissawak told court Monday. “I waited till he finished throwing up, then I helped him up. I helped him wash his face and hands. He couldn’t keep his eyes open.”
Leaning heavily for assistance, the weight of Kara “swayed me left and right,” almost like dancing.
Outside the Pravda Vodka Bar, taxis refused to stop for them. Finally, Tissawak propped Kara against a car and flagged down a cab.
Arriving at the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel, Tissawak had to race around to the other side of the vehicle to get Kara safely onto the sidewalk and through the revolving doors. Before they could make it through the lobby, Kara puked again on a counter. But Tissawak got his buddy into an elevator and up to the room.
Unlaced Kara’s shoes and removed them. Pulled off his sweater. Tried to get him under the sheets. “The minute I did that, he was on the pillow snoring.”
His task fulfilled, Tissawak returned to Pravda and shortly thereafter the gang tootled up to the Brass Rail.
Tissawak recalled walking along with the parking enforcement officer, who complained about the heels on her high leather boots. “She was able to walk on her own,” Tissawak testified Monday. But asked to review the statement he gave to investigators with Professional Standards, Tissawak quoted himself thusly: “It looks like she wasn’t feeling too good.”
If there’s a good guy in the sordid events which ensued, it was Tissawak, who was sipping Coke when the party got to the strip joint.
Whether the sex assault complainant (her name protected by a publication ban) was, as she’s testified, forced into having oral sex and intercourse later with three cops at the hotel, too drunk or perhaps drugged to fend them off; or, as the defence asserts, a consensual and eager participant in the ménage a quatre, actually the maestro behind all those sex acts, it was either-way a sordid encounter.
But Tissawak had gone home by then, he and another cop making their goodbyes at the Brass Rail as the complainant and two remaining cops got into a cab, headed for the Westin.
Under cross-examination, Tissawak agreed that he never heard the complainant being invited back to the Westin. “I didn’t understand why she would jump in the cab.”
Constables Kara, Leslie Nyznik and Joshua Cabero have all pleaded not guilty to the single charge of sexual assault.
If, as she has insisted, the complainant suddenly felt ill during that cab ride, her vision blurred, and once in the hotel room was so weirdly incapacitated — beyond routine drunkenness — that she couldn’t halt the alleged assault or get herself out of there until some two and a half hours later — then it’s a shame those present took less considerate care of the woman than Tissawak had earlier with Kara. One might expect such solicitude from friends and colleagues.
The complainant testified last week that she went to the hotel intending to rouse Kara — it’s unclear whose idea that had been — so they could venture out again. Kara was the officer she knew best, her pal.
Nobody from among the highpowered defence roster has yet claimed that any of the cops in that room — Kara (after he woke up), Nyznik and Cabero, declined to have sex with the complainant. Although Patrick Ducharme, who represents Cabero, suggested the woman may have confused his client, mistaken his voice, for one of the other accused.
From swabs taken at a hospital three days later, only Cabero’s DNA profile could be ruled out as a match with excretions found on the alleged victim’s body and clothing, the prosecution told court in their opening address. For Kara and Nyznik, the astronomical odds of not being the semen varied ranged from 1 in 440 million to 1 in 68 trillion (Kara) to one in 490 quadrillion (Nyznik).
Meanwhile, the complainant’s memory of the alleged assault ranged from firm (Nyznik placing his penis in her mouth) to sketchy, more of a “sensation” of being vaginally penetrated by someone (apparently Cabero). It was at that point, she testified, that an awak- ening Kara said: “Guys, stop. Josh, stop. Come on, stop.’’ And then Kara allegedly had intercourse with her as well.
The defence has banged on about the unreliability of the complainant’s memory and inconsistencies in her testimony when compared with original statements made to investigators.
Having elicited from the complainant that she was clearly wrong in some details — they hadn’t walked to the Brass Rail, for instance, they’d taken a cab — Kara’s lawyer, Alan Gold, on Monday challenged the witness on the rest of her recollections. “You voluntarily participated in an act that you simply do not remember, why is that not possible?’’
Witness: “Because the parts I do remember, I definitely was not consenting.”
Ducharme tilled the same furrows. “How are we to tell your memories apart, some that are so detailed and some that are so inaccurate?’’
The complainant finally got off the stand midday, after which Tissawak was sworn in.
Under cross-examination by Nyznik’s lawyer, Harry Black, Tissawak appeared taken aback — had no recall — of texts he exchanged with the complainant the following morning.
“How’s the hangover?,” Tissawak had asked.
“Pretty bad . . . I remember now why I don’t do that more often.”
Tissawak: “Hahah! I feel bad for you. You were all right yesterday. You looked buzzed but not drunk!!”
Complainant, after saying she had the cab pull over — this when she left the hotel, around 3:40 a.m. — because she was feeling sick: “I must have had like 10 drinks in the first hour with you guys being that I was doing Sameer’s shots too. I have no idea what was even said last night. So no worries! Lol’’
If he’d had that many drinks, Tissawak replies, he’d be flat on the floor.
Complainant: “Funny you say that. That’s exactly where I woke up!! . . . Passed out on my bathroom floor. I’m classy like that. Hahaha”
The judge-alone trial continues. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.