Detective tears up describing slain witness
Three years and 53 days ago, Toronto Police Det.-sgt. Royce Macdonald was sitting outside courtroom 4-9 at Toronto’s main courthouse, shepherding witnesses in and out of an attempted murder trial.
Thursday, he was there again — “This very courtroom,” as he said sorrowfully, shaking his head.
But this time, with one of the witnesses he’d babysat gunned down in the street, Royce was himself in the stand, giving evidence about that first trial and the young man at its centre.
The allegation now is that that witness, 30-year-old Kenneth Mark, was shot in the head precisely because in co-operating with Macdonald and his ilk and then testifying at the attempted murder trial, he’d broken the code of silence and written his own death sentence.
The chronology given to Ontario Superior Court judge Ian Nordheimer and a jury goes like this:
On Dec. 14, 2009, the attempted murder trial of Lamar (“Ammo”) Skeete and his brother began in 4-9.
The two were accused in the Sept. 2, 2008, shooting of Mark, wherein while sitting in the courtyard of the housing project where he’d grown up, he had taken a shotgun blast to face and body and was left with 57 pellets in his right cheek, neck, shoulder and back.
Before the trial proper started, prosecutors withdrew all charges against Skeete, saying there was no reasonable prospect of conviction, and he walked out of 4-9 a free man.
Later that day, Mark took the witness stand to testify that it was Skeete’s brother who had fired a shotgun at him, and that Skeete had been standing behind him when he did it.
On Dec. 15, 2009, Mark continued his testimony and was cross-examined by defence counsel.
On Dec. 17, 2009, Skeete’s brother was acquitted of all charges and walked out of court a free man.
On Dec. 29, 2009, Mark was a dead man walking to work at the Walmart near his house.
He’d just picked up food and had his headphones on.
He was shot once in the back of the head at close range, and died almost instantly.
Clearly, having witnesses taken out — Skeete is pleading not guilty to firstdegree murder — on the allegation they’d given evidence would be a bad thing for a justice system.
It may be that, and also Mark’s mellow personality and the fact that Macdonald obviously liked him, which caused the detective to break down a little as he described his first meeting with the young man.
With 22 years on the job Macdonald is no ingenue.
Yet when prosecutor Mary Humphrey asked him to describe that first meeting, the detective’s eyes appeared to fill up. Humphrey asked to take the lunch break a few minutes early.
Macdonald described a meeting the police organized at the complex on Nov. 3, 2008.
It was in response to a spike in gun violence in the low-rise project — there’d been the shooting of Mark, a second shooting on Oct. 16, and one of the residents had come to the police for assistance.
Macdonald told the small crowd that “unless we have community support and help, leads to go on, there’s not much we can do.”
By this, he told Humphrey, he meant that if police had no witnesses or people willing to talk, crimes would go unsolved.
As the meeting ended, Mark came up and introduced himself. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
Macdonald, having seen the pictures of his injuries, recognized him. “I know exactly who you are,” he said.
“He advised me he was the one who was shot, and said he’d like to come in and speak to us,” the detective said.
The next day, Mark came to the station and gave a sworn, videotaped statement in which he implicated Skeete and his brother in the shooting, and explained what the alleged motive might have been.
A week or so earlier, he said, he’d heard from the kids in the complex that the two were showing the local children, including his own nieces and nephews, a gun.
Thereafter, Mark told the detective, when he ran into Skeete’s brother, he called him out on the gun display, told him to stay away from the complex.
Now, when police had first asked Mark who shot him, he’d denied knowing who it was. Then, he said, the brothers came looking for him at the complex, and that made him anxious and angry. When he testified at the preliminary hearing before Skeete and brother were committed for trial, he testified, “After they shot him, he feared for his life because he didn’t want to die.”
But as it appears Mark had been an honest witness — he admitted, for instance, it was “possible” it hadn’t been Skeete standing behind his brother that night — so was Macdonald.
In cross-examination by defence lawyer Ferhan Javed, he admitted that Mark never told him he was afraid of Skeete and his brother, never once voiced concern about going to court.
The enormous young man — he stood 6-foot-4 and weighed about 300 pounds — was known as a quiet man. Was he too proud to tell Macdonald he was afraid?
The last time the detec- tive saw him, Mark was in the victim/witness office at the courthouse. He had finished testifying, and was looking after the little boy of a friend who had followed him to the witness stand.
“She wasn’t comfortable leaving him with anyone but Kenneth,” Macdon- ald said. “How was his demeanour?” Humphrey asked.
“To me, Kenneth’s demeanour doesn’t change. He’s a fairly well-spoken individual . . . the transcript doesn’t necessarily show that. I spent a lot of time with Kenneth. He’s very, very soft-spoken and you have to ask him to speak up.”
The detective seemed unaware he was using the present tense throughout.