Accused says he did not intend to shoot anyone

The plan was shoot to kill and it only took about 27 seconds to execute.

Shaquille Collins stepped out of a cab, readied a Colt .45 and fired five times before making haste from 16 Milton Ave., the prosecution argued during his first-degree murder trial Monday.

Two bullets hit Justin Beals, who was desperately trying to get into the brick home off Barton Street East as Collins fired the gun on May 21, 2012, assistant Crown Jill MacKenzie said.

“And the plan all along was to kill Mr. Beals,” she told Collins, seated in the witness box across from the 12-member jury.

“No, ma’am,” Collins responded, wearing a goatee, purple button-down shirt and grey suit.

One of the bullets ended up hitting James Bajkor, who was working on a shed in the backyard of his home on the small side street off Barton Street East.

Beals survived emergency surgery, but Bajkor, a 22-year-old crossfire victim, did not, dying at Hamilton General Hospital.

Collins, 25, is being retried on charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder.

The jury has heard it was a “jail beef” that set off a scuffle between Beals and Collins outside an apartment building on Sanford Avenue North.

The two fought and Collins, 19 at the time, said he ended up on the ground with a “busted lip.”

He said he was angry and couldn’t find a pouch he’d had around his shoulder when he dusted himself off.

“And I wanted to know why they were running, so I started chasing them.”

Collins said his ID, drugs, money and a cellphone were in the pouch.

The jury has heard Beals and his then girlfriend, Amber Thorogood, ran toward 16 Milton Ave., where she enlisted the help of her cousin, Brandon Hackett, who rented a room from Bajkor.

Collins said he contacted two friends to help him beat up Beals but insisted he didn’t ask for a gun.

“Did you intend to kill Mr. Beals” asked defence counsel Alison Craig.

“No.”

“Did you intend to shoot him?” “No.”

However, Collins said, someone in a crowd taking in the spectacle had shouted “gun,” raising the spectre that one of his opponents could have been armed.

Later, when he arrived on Milton Avenue in a cab with his two friends, one told him he had a gun, Collins said.

So he took it, jogged up to the house and confronted Beals in a narrow alley that ran along the side of the home.

Collins said he asked for his pouch, but Beals balked that he had a real gun, which prompted him to show he did, firing two shots above his head. Beals “lunged” at him, grabbed his gun arm — a struggle during which he squeezed the trigger while stumbling back, Collins said.

Then, he wrapped the gun up in his friend’s sweater and bolted, not knowing if anyone had been shot, he told Craig.

Upon cross-examination, MacKenzie put it to Collins that the “jail beef ” was over him assaulting one of Beals’ friends in his cell.

Not the case, Collins said. MacKenzie also argued he contacted “his soldiers” to fetch his gun and followed Beals back to 16 Milton Ave. to shoot him.

“You knew it made sense for the youth to carry the gun,” MacKenzie added, referring to one of the two friends who was 17 at the time. He needed the cab because he didn’t want to carry a loaded gun on the street, she argued.

At one point, Collins, under heavy questioning, responded, “My intention wasn’t to go and shoot anybody.”

But MacKenzie also argued there was no time for verbal jousting, warning shots in the alley or wrestling in the roughly 27 seconds it took Collins to exit the cab, fire five bullets and flee the scene.

“They were running for their lives,” MacKenzie told Collins, who repeatedly rejected the Crown’s narrative.

The prosecutor also pointed to the physical evidence: a lack of blood in the alley where Collins said he’d fired the gun. “What’s your point?” he asked. “My point is that Justin Beals could not have been shot in the alleyway.”

The trial continues Tuesday.