Bosma co-accused can’t recall where he buried murder weapon

Smich said he panicked when pistol was delivered to him by Millard’s roommate

HAMILTON— Mark Smich admits he buried the gun that was used to kill Tim Bosma — but he doesn’t remember where that was.

“I hopped on my bike, rode into the forest and buried it,” the 28-year-old recalled Thursday on the witness stand at his first-degree murder trial.

Smich is co-accused with Dellen Millard, 30, in the first-degree murder of Ancaster dad Tim Bosma, who disappeared May 6, 2013 after taking two men for a test drive in the pickup truck he was selling online.

Smich has admitted that it was him and Millard on the test drive that night, but he insists he was not in the truck when Bosma was shot, instead placing the blame squarely on his co-accused (who has opted not to take the stand).

Smich testified he got out of the pickup truck to follow behind them in Millard’s SUV that night and only discovered Bosma was dead after the two vehicles pulled over on a Brantford side road.

Smich has insisted the plan was simply to “scope out” a diesel truck to potentially steal later, like several other theft “missions” the pair had committed together. (They met through drug dealing; Smich as the seller and Millard as the buyer.)

Murder, he insists, had not been part of the plan.

Smich testified about being in “utter shock” during the cleanup after the shooting, recalling in detail how Millard ordered him to strip and wash the truck later that night at Millard’s air hangar.

The Crown says Bosma’s body was incinerated in The Eliminator — a massive animal cremator owned by Millard — outside the hangar. Smich testified it was Millard who had turned on the device and that he himself had stayed “as far away as possible.”

Smich was scared of Millard, he said, recalling that his friend looked like “a lunatic” after the shooting.

On Thursday, Smich testified about the days following Millard’s arrest on May 10, 2013, and how he “unexpect- edly” received the murder weapon through a friend.

Smich called Millard’s roommate Andrew Michalski after the arrest, hoping to get a hold of Millard’s stash of marijuana. But when the backpack full of drugs was eventually delivered to him, he said, there was a tool box with it as well, which contained a gun.

Smich said he panicked and expressed to his friend Brendan Daly that he thought Millard was trying to “frame” him by sending him what he believed was the pistol that had been used to kill Bosma. He needed to get rid of it. At first, he tried to sell it — because he needed money for a lawyer, he said. But when his prospective buyer — a guy who went by the nickname “Bleach,” the jury has heard — showed up short on cash, Daly suggested burying the gun.

So he did, Smich said. He took a garden spade and rode his bike into the woods under the dark of night and buried it.

His lawyer, Thomas Dungey, asked him why he didn’t call the police or turn in the gun.

“I was scared because, you know, with my criminal record and everything. . . . It was quite possible the police wouldn’t believe me,” he said.

On the stand Thursday, Smich insisted that the gun was not his. “I’ve never owned a gun,” he said. The trial will resume Monday, when Millard’s lawyer — and then the Crown — will cross-examine Smich.