BURST
Video images before and during a stabbing on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver provided enough clear evidence for police to identify the assailant and for a judge to decide if they were enough to find him guilty.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge first had to ensure beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused, Garrett Stuart, was the man who cut the victim while he was preventing Stuart from stealing a bag from a man sleeping on a bench outside the SkyTrain station near the Bay.
Based largely on the security video footage, which helped police see how the attack happen and gather tips from two members of the public to identify Stuart, Justice Elin Sigurdson found the prosecution had proven its case.
“The sole issue in this case is whether the Crown has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Stuart is the person who caused (A.A.’s) injury,” she wrote.
“Considering all of the evidence before me, I am satisfied that the admissible evidence … is sufficient for me to be able to assess the case and determine whether the Crown’s burden is met beyond a reasonable doubt,” she wrote. “I find that this burden has been met.”
Stuart was found guilty of aggravated assault and is to be sentenced later.
A.A. was celebrating a birthday with four longtime friends on Jan. 14, 2023, and they happened to exit the SkyTrain outside the Bay at the same time as Stuart and his two buddies, according to the judgment.
The footage shows Stuart and the other two taking photos of the sleeping man, before Stuart is about to take his bag while he slept, it said.
A.A. is seen stepping in between the sleeping man and Stuart, and holding the sleeping man’s bag in one hand and his own backpack in the other when one of Stuart’s companions punches him and he drops them, it said.
A.A. advances toward him and Stuart backs up, but pulls something out of his pocket and strikes A.A. in the torso before running off, according to the judgment.
A.A. is left with what a police officer testified was a “gaping wound” of about five centimetres and he was taken by ambulance to hospital, it said.
Vancouver police used video from in and around the SkyTrain station as well as from the Bay to piece together the timeline and to create stills to distribute to officers and to news media to identify the attacker, the judgment said.
Two callers to the tip line identified Stuart. One had known him from the town they both lived in while younger and another was a former co-worker, the ruling said.
A Vancouver police officer testified that he recognized Stuart as someone he had arrested previously and had had conversations with while on his beat.
Sigurdson said she also had to ensure the superior images of an unmasked Stuart on the SkyTrain platform before the attack matched that of him wearing a mask during the attack.
“The video evidence in this case was of significant assistance,” Sigurdson wrote.
“Its quality was not perfect, but was adequate to recognize the different individuals as they moved through the SkyTrain system and onto Granville Street,” she said. “It was also adequate to follow and make conclusions about the movements and actions of the individuals when they were on Granville Street,” she said.
“I find that the only reasonable conclusion available is that the masked man in the red hat is the same person as the man in the red hat wearing identical clothing in the SkyTrain CCTV videos,” she concluded.
She said the video alone wasn’t enough for a conviction but the “constellation of evidence,” was.
Stuart’s lawyer argued that the evidence of three witnesses who identified Stuart from the videos was “borderline” because they had only a short viewing of him and none offered a unique identiable feature, such as his facial mole.