Trial hears of gun in toolbox

Friend testifies Smich grew more nervous in days after Millard’s arrest

Mark Smich’s pot-smoking buddy tried to help him get rid of a gun after Dellen Millard was arrested.

On the stand Tuesday, Brendan Daly described Smich as one of his best friends back in May 2013. Both unemployed, they’d meet up every day to smoke weed together.

After Millard was arrested on May 10, 2013, Daly recalled that Smich became increasingly paranoid that people were coming for him. He was “jumpy” and “nervous,” always looking over his shoulder.

“He said ‘I f---ed up man, I f---ed up man,’” Daly recalled.

Twelve days later, Smich was also arrested.

Smich, 28, and Millard, 30, are coaccused in the first-degree murder of Ancaster dad Tim Bosma, who disappeared May 6, 2013 after taking two men for a test drive in his pickup truck. The Crown says Bosma was shot in his truck, his body then incinerated.

The murder weapon was never recovered, the jury has heard, but the Crown said in its opening ad- dress that it believes the gun was shuffled around in a toolbox, passed off from Millard to a friend, before Smich got rid of it.

A toolbox seized by police from Smich’s home in Oakville contained traces of gunshot residue.

Daly recalled that Smich moved out of his mom’s house after Millard’s arrest and was crashing at his girlfriend’s sister ’s apartment. He deactivated his Facebook page and cut off his cellphones.

At one point, Daly recalled, Smich showed him a YouTube video about “zombie bullets,” and mentioned a gun.

“He said the bullets (in the video) went with a gun he had wanted, and he’d ended up with a different one. Dell got the one he wanted,” Daly said, referring to Millard by his nickname.

The gun, Smich told him, was stashed in a toolbox. He’d had a friend move it, and it was hidden under a dryer in his mom’s garage.

In the days that followed, Smich asked Daly to help him get rid of the gun, as well as a “big bag of weed” that was also in the toolbox. He needed money for a lawyer.

Daly texted a friend but when they met up to discuss the sale, the friend didn’t have enough cash. Smich wanted more than $1,000 for the gun.

Daly remembers saying to Smich that if it were him he’d put on a hard hat and a work vest and, disguised as a city worker, go bury it.

In its opening address, the Crown said Smich’s girlfriend Marlena Meneses will testify that Smich told her he buried the gun in the forest.

When Daly asked Smich about the Bosma case — it was all over the news — he snapped. He became defensive and denied any involvement, he said. Daly dropped it.

Then, on May 22, the day Smich was arrested, police showed up at Daly’s house.

Daly talked to them, but left out the parts about the gun.

“I didn’t lie but I didn’t tell them everything I knew,” he told the court. “I didn’t want to be called a snitch.” Later, after consulting a lawyer, he came clean.

Cross-examination of Daly will continue Wednesday.