Brotherston charges stayed after complainant dies

Charges against Gregory Brotherston and co-accused David Hill have been stayed following the death of the complainant.

Brotherston, the son of former Highlands councillors Ken and Marie Brotherston, was charged Sept. 22, with three counts of assault causing bodily harm to a woman on March 28, 2016, in Saanich.

Hill was charged with assaulting the woman on the same day by threatening her with a dog.

The charges were stayed on March 29, said Dan McLaughlin, communications counsel for the B.C. Prosecution Service. “Shortly before that time, the Crown had become aware that the main witness and complainant on the file was deceased,” McLaughlin said.

After his arrest on the charges, Brotherston was denied bail and remained in custody at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre. He appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court and was released on $100,000 bail on Jan. 26.

It’s just the latest chapter in Brotherston’s brushes with the law.

In February 2014, Gregory Brotherston was acquitted of breaking into the trailer of an elderly Langford man and robbing him of his debit card and PIN in the early hours of Oct. 6, 2012. The elderly man died before the case went to trial.

Four years before that acquittal, Brotherston, his father, Ken Sr., and his brother, Ken Jr., who died recently, were found not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Keith Taylor of Colwood.

A judge found Ken Sr. acted in self-defence, believing that Taylor, who was high on crack cocaine, would kill him when he came at him with a gun, then a knife, on May 30, 2008.

The judge dismissed seconddegree murder charges against the sons on the basis that they were assisting their father’s self-defence.