Friend offers glimpse into world where loyalty trumps snitching

It is a world where you meet your best friend every day to smoke weed.

Where guys have nicknames like “Say10” and “Bleach” and you might call someone a really close pal and yet never know his last name. Where you know a guy who might want to buy a handgun or a big bag of weed off you — or both if you’re lucky, because you need the cash to get a lawyer.

A world where being a snitch is about as low as it gets. Maybe worse than being a killer. This is the world of Mark Smich. The jury at the Tim Bosma murder trial has heard a lot about the life of Dellen Millard, 30. His wealthy lifestyle, his women, his homes and cars, his reckless pursuits, his toys.

And always, Smich a step or two behind him. A bit mysterious. Certainly less polished.

Testimony Tuesday from Smich’s self-described best friend, Brendan Daly, put the 28-year-old accused murderer i n the spotlight for a change and gave the jury a glimpse into his world.

Smich and Millard are on trial for the first-degree murder of Tim Bosma, 32, of Ancaster. On May 6, 2013 Tim took two men for a test drive of the truck he was selling and never returned to his family. The Crown team believes he was shot in his truck, his body incinerated.

Daly, 23, is stocky with closecropped hair and glasses, and in his second year of a college trades course.

He lived a block away from the Smich home in Oakville. About five years ago he walked past a slightly older guy sitting on a front porch and got talking to him. That guy was Smich.

By the time Tim vanished, Daly considered Smich (nickname “Say10”) his best friend and they met virtually every day so Daly could buy marijuana and smoke it with his bestie, court heard. Neither of them had a job.

(A few times Justice Andrew Goodman has instructed jurors that just because an accused may have allegedly stolen cars or sold drugs or possessed a firearm does not mean he is guilty of first-degree murder.)

The jury has already seen police surveillance photos of Daly and Smich together.

Daly is an important witness because he knows Smich had a gun in a toolbox. It came up when Smich showed him a YouTube video.

The video was about “zombie bullets.” Those bullets went with the gun Smich wanted, according to Daly, but that gun went to Millard. Instead Smich got a different gun. And it was in a toolbox.

The toolbox, Daly tells the court, was kept in the bottom of a dryer at Smich’s mother’s home.

Daly says Smich told him all of this.

After Millard is arrested in connection with Tim’s disappearance, Smich is anxious to get rid of the gun, Daly says. “The gun or the big bag of weed — one or the other,” Daly says. Smich told him he needed cash to hire a lawyer.

Daly knew a guy. His name was Mike (nickname “Bleach”). He was “a close friend,” says Daly. Yet he doesn’t know his last name.

Bleach had $100. But Smich wanted $1,000 for the gun. So no deal.

Daly suggested Smich “put on a hard hat and a work vest and go bury it” like he was “a city worker.”

After Smich was arrested, homicide detectives showed up at Daly’s house.

“I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell them everything I knew.” He left out the gun, he says. “I didn’t want to be called a snitch.”

A world where loyalty to a friend trumps ratting on an accused killer.