Defence lawyer suggests victim who was assaulted with blowtorch may have been intoxicated
Client: William McIntosh
Charge: Break and Enter, Aggravated Assault
Defence: involvement of client is clouded by drugs or alcohol
Result: trial continues
The prosecution countered the claim that Sean Brooks was intoxicated, saying Brooks' memory of escaping his basement was corroborated by physical evidence found around the neighbourhood
The victim of a brutal assault in which bleach and a blowtorch were used as weapons may have been high at the time, the lawyer for one of his alleged assailant’s suggested Friday.
Defence counsel Alain Hepner said Sean Brooks’s claim that his client, William McIntosh, was involved in the attack could have been clouded by drugs or alcohol.
“Mr. Brooks was under the influence, stoned, or clearly wrong about (McIntosh’s) involvement,” Hepner told Court of King’s Bench Justice Michael Marion.
“He just got it wrong,” the lawyer said. “I’m not minimizing what happened to Mr. Brooks, I’m just saying it wasn’t Will McIntosh involved.”
Prosecutor says Brooks’s strong memory of escape contradicts claim he was intoxicated
McIntosh, 29, is charged with break and enter for the purpose of committing unlawful confinement and aggravated assault in connection with a March 5, 2021, incident inside Brooks’s northeast Calgary basement suite.
Hepner said he wasn’t questioning whether Brooks was the victim of a serious assault, just that his intoxication led him to wrongly believe McIntosh was involved.
But Crown prosecutor Jack Kelly said physical evidence, from both the scene and along the victim’s escape route, showed Brooks had a good memory of the attack.
The victim testified that at one point during the assault, his attackers had retreated upstairs to McIntosh’s unit.
At that point, he was able to free his hands because the bleach that had been poured into his eyes and on his wounds made him oily enough to slip the zip ties that bound him. He then smashed his bedroom window and fled.
Physical evidence of Brooks’s path after escaping corroborates memory, prosecution says
Brooks said he went to the next-door neighbour’s home and banged on the door, but got no answer, before running down the street, stumbling into a parked car and climbing over a picket fence before collapsing in a yard.
Blood stains on the neighbour’s door, hood and fender of a parked car and on top of some of the pickets in the fence “corroborate Mr. Brooks’ description of his flight from the scene,” Kelly said.
The prosecutor said suggestions Brooks’s memory was tainted by intoxicants “is contradicted by his recollection of his escape.”
A second man who was on trial with McIntosh, Rory Libbrecht, was acquitted Thursday when Marion agreed with defence lawyer Kristen Lancee that there was no evidence identifying him as being involved in the assault.
A third suspect, Cole McLean, will have his case dealt with at a later date.
Source: The Calgary Herald