Accused’s phone silent at time of stabbing
Taxi carrying co-accused was pulled over and released by police on the night of the homicide
The voice on the recording at 3:09 a.m. to a taxi dispatcher sounds winded.
“Can I get a cab to 177 Wilson Street?”
Is it the voice of an innocent person, or a man who just participated in killing Carel Douse less than 10 minutes earlier?
The latter narrative is the one Crown prosecutors have been presenting to a jury, which they will conclude Wednesday.
The man who owns that phone, the Crown suggested in court, is Daniel Wise, who is charged in the first-degree stabbing murder of Douse on May 18, 2019.
The recording, along with video and taxi dashcam pictures of Wise and co-accused Alieu Jeng, and Samatar Hassan — who has already plead guilty to manslaughter in Douse’s death — were presented to the jury Tuesday.
The three men are pictured that morning in a taxi, and on video entering two convenience stores located within three kilometres of where Douse was found fatally wounded on East Avenue North.
At 3:44 a.m., a call is made to a taxi dispatcher from a phone that does not belong to Wise; the implication in court was that Wise used a phone belonging to one of the other two men.
“Sorry, I ordered a cab to 177 Wilson,” says the caller, “I think I left my phone in the cab.”
Hamilton police crime analyst Jovan Krasulja presented slides to the jury, illustrating Wise’s phone activity, pinging off cell towers that night.
He drew attention to a period of zero calls or texts, just before and after Douse was stabbed just after 3 a.m.
“No cell activity from 2:20 to 3:09,” read the words in red on one slide.
Immediately prior to this inactivity, the cellphone had been used 11 times.
Wise’s lawyer, Tyler Smith, asked Krasulja if the analyst had studied the overall pattern of cellphone activity by his client in the weeks prior to the homicide.
The analyst said he had not. At least one of the calls from Wise’s cellphone that night had been to a woman named Melissa Little, who testified earlier in the trial that Wise had phoned begging her to give him a ride that night.
She testified that the reason he gave was to “get at somebody because he jumped a family member.”
Krasulja told the jury that at 3:16 a.m. — the moment Douse arrived at Hamilton General Hospital — a taxi carrying Wise, Jeng, and Hassan was pulled over by a police officer, but was released one minute later.