Dellen Millard bought gun, court hears

Trial shown text messages between man accused of killing father and weapons dealer

TORONTO— A Toronto man accused of killing his father, whose death was initially ruled a suicide, had bought the handgun found next to his dad’s body from a weapons dealer a few months earlier, his trial heard Monday.

Jim Falconer, a retired forensic officer with the Ontario Provincial Police, took the court through text messages between Dellen Millard and a man who pleaded guilty last summer to selling the 32-year-old three handguns.

In one of them, Matthew Ward Jackson discusses a gun Millard might like, court heard.

“.32 but its really nice compact piece I’m sure ud like it,” Ward-Jackson wrote to Millard in a text on July 1, 2012. “But it’s gonna cost a lil. Thay’ve been prohibited for 30 yrs. here now. So u got a very rare thing lucky u.”

“That’s great news!” Millard texted back. Court heard he bought the gun.

The messages were among hundreds found on Millard’s electronic devices and submitted as evidence at the judgealone trial. Millard has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in his father’s death.

Wayne Millard, a wealthy aviation executive, died of a single gunshot wound through the eye in November 2012, court has heard.

The gun Dellen Millard bought from Ward Jackson — a .32-calibre Smith and Wesson revolver — was later found by a coroner next to the bed where Wayne Millard’s body lay, the trial heard. Documents show Dellen Millard’s DNA was found on the gun’s handle.

The trial has heard that the younger Millard told police he found his father dead on Nov. 29, 2012. He also told police the last time he saw Wayne Millard alive was the previous day at about noon.

An agreed statement of facts filed at the trial by the prosecution shows data indicating one of Dellen Millard’s phones moving from his friend Mark Smich’s house around 1 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2012, to his father’s home where it stayed until shortly after 6 a.m.

Earlier Monday, the prosecution tried to put into evidence a photograph of Millard that showed him with a bloody eye.

The image, which court heard did not appear to involve real blood, was purportedly uploaded by Millard to a gaming website just two weeks before Wayne Millard died.

Justice Maureen Forestell, who called the image “gruesome,” sided with Millard’s lawyer, Ravin Pillay, and excluded the image from evidence.