BURSTThe man accused of stabbing and killing Surrey’s Tori Dunn in Port Kells on June 16, 2024 took the stand Monday in New Westminster Supreme Court Monday.
Adam Troy Mann, who was charged with second-degree murder in June of 2024, “is going to take the stand and he is going to give you his defence,” defence counsel Casey St. Germain told the jury in an opening statement.
“Now it’s time to hear the other side of the story.”
St. Germain first asked Mann a little about himself. He turns 43 in December, and was born and raised in Windsor, Ont., court heard, with his mother and seven younger siblings.
Mann, dressed in a dark sweatshirt and collared white shirt, sporting a full beard, remained standing while he testified, looking toward counsel as well as the jury and Dunn’s family members and friends who were present in the gallery.
“My mother is black and my father is native,” Mann shared, saying his father left when he was a toddler, and his mother didn’t work, and was on welfare.
“I grew up poor … (in) poverty,” Mann said, saying his father struggled with alcohol addiction.
“He would become abusive (when he drank) and he would beat me and my other siblings,” Mann said, adding that it happened “every day.”
He was placed in foster care around the age of five or six, he said, and started drinking “every day” around the age of 13 or 14. He didn’t finish high school, but went as far as Grade 10, court heard, and worked in construction sometimes.
St. Germain asked him about his past criminal record, including a 2003 conviction in Ontario for possession of property obtained by crime, for which he served seven months, as well as a 2009 Ontario conviction for failure to comply with a court order. Mann also confirmed he served a two-month sentence for theft under $5,000, and was convicted of two failures to comply with a court order in Abbotsford, B.C. in 2021, as well as failure to comply with a court order in Vancouver in 2024.
“I want to take your attention now to June of 2024,” St. Germain said, asking Mann to describe his life at that time.
“I was poor … homeless,” Mann said, confirming he was using alcohol and cocaine at the time and that how he consumed cocaine changed over time from snorting it to smoking it.
He used welfare to fund his habits, he told court, and admitted he would occasionally steal from stores.
On June 16, he was on a bus in Surrey and “ended up getting into a fight with some rando guy on bus … I thought he took my bag,” Mann said. “At the end I got off the bus because somebody (said they) called cops on me. … I seen people with their phones.”
Because he got off the bus early, and not at Scott Road SkyTrain, he didn’t know where he was, Mann testified.
“(It was) some random neighbourhood. I began looking for a place to hide — I thought somebody had called the cops on me.”
He was looking for another bus stop as well as a place to hide, Mann said, testifying that he had drunk alcohol and used crack cocaine that day. Asked about the impact of drug use, Mann said his short-term memory is affected.
“My short-term memory would go … I’d place something somewhere then two seconds later, forget where I placed it,” said Mann. “(Cocaine) wipes your memory pretty much.”
As he wandered the random neighbourhood he said he was unfamiliar with, Mann said he was walking down the street when he “saw something shiny out of the corner of my eye” that turned out to be a kitchen knife and cellphone.
“I didn’t know if (the items) were stolen or not … the knife had blood on it, the tip was broken … so I threw it (away).”
When St. Germain asked why he threw the knife away, Mann said it looked like it had blood on it, the tip was broken, and it didn’t have a sheath.
“I could hear sirens … (the knife) had no value … it was just a kitchen knife, not a hunting knife.”
With the cellphone that was found, Mann said “it was my intention was to keep it … the more cops (that) showed up, the more I got spooked. I didn’t know if phone was stolen or not, so I tossed it,” Mann said, confirming he was wearing a hoodie, black pants and back shoes.
When asked why he got rid of the hoodie he was wearing, Mann said he thought the police were looking for him because of the fight on the bus.
“I remember being in some bushes behind houses,” Mann said.
He held the knife for “just seconds,” he told court, but held onto the phone for longer, likely minutes, as he “figured it was probably valuable,” and that he might be able to get some money for it.
He didn’t remember where he was when he was detained by police that night, Mann said.
“I just remember a cop jumping out of his vehicle and him detaining me. I’m lost … I’m not from B.C. … I was trying to find my way to SkyTrain,” he said.
Asked about the toque he had been wearing that night, Mann responded, “I think I tossed it.”
When asked why, he said it was “to change my description from the fight on the bus.”
Defence counsel concluded, and Crown counsel Tim Livingston started cross-examination after the morning break.
Dunn’s family, friends and boyfriend at the time of her death who she shared the Port Kells hone with, Trafford Wace, listened intently during Mann’s testimony.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Layton is presiding over the trial, which started Oct. 5.
More to come …