BURST
A prosecutor suggested to B.C. Supreme Court jurors on Wednesday that two 2018 slayings can be linked to accused killer Kane Carter by key pieces of circumstantial evidence including video, cellphone records and Carter’s DNA inside the getaway vehicle.
Don Montrichard said in his opening submissions that the prosecution case against Carter “is built almost entirely upon circumstantial or indirect evidence” that will consist of 40 witnesses and about 100 exhibits.
Carter faces two counts of second-degree murder in the fatal shootings of Kevin Whiteside and 15-year-old Alfred Wong at the busy Vancouver intersection of Broadway and Ontario about 9:17 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2018.
Whiteside was running along Broadway shooting at two people in a taxi when he was struck by gunfire and collapsed, while Wong was in the rear seat of his parents’ car headed east when a stray bullet pierced his chest. He died two days later. A third person had his cheek grazed in the shootout.
After Wong was wounded, “he cried out confused about what had just occurred,” Montrichard told jurors and Justice Catherine Wedge. “It is beyond all dispute that the facts of this case are tragic.”
He said the teen’s mother, who was driving that night, would be called as a prosecution witness and that dashcam footage from the family vehicle “will be featured prominently at several stages in this trial.”
Montrichard explained to jurors that his opening remarks are not evidence in the case, but merely a “road map” of the anticipated evidence the prosecution expects to present over the seven-week trial.
Footage from a camera at 2520 Ontario shows a red Montana van linked to Carter leaving the scene after the shooting, eastward on Broadway, Montrichard said, adding that a phone number linked to Carter was pinging off towers along Broadway and then Highway 1.
The Montana was later found in the parkade of a Surrey building where Carter rented an apartment, the prosecutor said.
When police seized and searched the van, “they found several items of evidence, including the blood of the accused on a tissue in the vehicle centre console and his DNA on the driver’s seat controls inside this vehicle,” Montrichard said. “They also found three fired nine-millimetre bullet casings. The police investigators also observed that there was apparent bullet damage to the frame of the driver’s side door of the Montana van.”
Montrichard explained that before the shooting, a drug trafficker named Matthew Navas-Rivas had been with a friend at the Indochine restaurant, then at Broadway and Ontario streets. When the pair left and got into a taxi, Whiteside started shooting at them, he told jurors.
“You will not hear from Mr. Navas-Rivas, as he was shot to death during another incident, which occurred in July 2018,” Montrichard said. “So importantly, as far as the Crown is aware, no one actually observed a shooter apart from Mr. Whiteside at the intersection.”
But the friend, whose identify is covered by a publication ban, is expected to testify “about key events and relationships in the months before and after the shootings.”
When an officer attended to Whiteside, who died the next day in hospital, they found “a revolver-style handgun next to Mr. Whiteside’s prone body. That gun was later determined to contain six fired bullet cartridges,” Montrichard said.
“While waiting for an ambulance to assist Mr. Whiteside, that police officer searched his clothing and he found another handgun in Mr. Whiteside’s pocket. This time it was a semi-automatic pistol which was later determined to contain six unfired bullet cartridges.”
Wedge laid out the role of the jurors and explained to them that there had been an earlier trial, without stating what the outcome was.
“I’m telling you this simply because some of you may have read or heard about the previous trial in the media,” she said. “As well, witnesses may be asked questions in this trial relating to evidence they gave in the previous trial. You must not speculate or concern yourselves in any way about why there may have been a previous trial.”
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