Thomas Keeping was convicted Wednesday of stabbing a man last fall, even though the man testified Keeping was definitely not the guy responsible.
The victim told the court earlier this month he didn’t know who had stabbed him, but he was sure it wasn’t Keeping.
Judge Colin Flynn decided not to put any weight on the victim’s words, however.
“I have no faith in the testimony of the victim on this point,” Flynn said. He refused to cooperate with police from the outset and did not want to testify about the incident at trial. He volunteered, without being asked, that the perpetrator was not the accused.”
Without the evidence of the victim, Tyler Dove, Flynn acknowledged the evidence against Keeping was circumstantial, but felt there was enough to convict him on a charge of aggravated assault anyway.
A resident of Outerbridge Road testified she had been outside early in the morning last Nov. 28, and had seen a man drive a school bus onto the street, parking it near the home of Dove’s grandmother. The woman said the man got out and banged on the door, appearing angry.
Dove’s teenage brother testified he had been living with their grandmother in her home and had woken up early to get ready for school. Hearing yelling and fighting around 8 a.m., he went upstairs from his basement bedroom to see what was happening.
The teenager said he saw Dove and another man fighting inside the home near the front door, and when the man ran outside, Dove chased him. The teenager said he followed, and saw his brother in an altercation with the other man before yelling out, “I’m hurt, I got stabbed.”
At that point, Dove’s grandmother was walking back to the house, having gone out to get coffee and breakfast. She told the court she saw two people fighting on the lawn and at first thought it was her two grandsons.
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She said saw Dove run after the other man and make a hitting motion before her younger grandson called out, “Nan, get down here, Tyler’s been stabbed and it’s bad.” The woman said the man ran away.
Police arrived on the scene minutes later, but Dove would not co-operate with them and refused to give a statement. A police dog was brought in and tracked a scent to a home on Doyle Street, where Keeping was found, hiding on the ground under a patio. He was carrying two knives and four cellphones, one of them belonging to Dove’s grandmother. A key to a school bus — later determined to have been stolen — was found on the ground where Keeping had been lying. The bus was parked next to Dove’s grandmother’s house and Keeping’s blood was found on paper towels inside the vehicle.
Dove received three stab wounds in the attack, requiring surgery, but declined to provide police with a sample of his DNA in order to compare it to samples taken from the knives Keeping was carrying.
Keeping’s lawyer, Shelley Senior, had suggested there were two men hiding from police in the neighbourhood that morning: the stabber and her client, whom she said had run from the officers because he had stolen the bus.
Flynn dismissed that suggestion.
“The only reasonable and logical inference I can draw from the evidence noted is that the man who drove the bus to the parking lot at Outerbridge Street, walked from the bus to the parking lot at Outerbridge Street, walked from the bus to the door of (Dove’s grandmother’s) resident, and banged on the door was the same person who was arrested a short distance away, hiding between the fence and the patio near (a home on) Doyle Street,” the judge said.
As a result, the only reasonable and logical explanation is that Keeping was the man who stabbed Dove and was later found hiding with Dove’s grandmother’s cellphone and two knives.
Flynn acknowledged discrepancies in the testimony of the witnesses when it came to what the stabber had been wearing and the clothing Keeping was wearing when he was arrested. While an investigator had described Keeping’s jacket as mostly red, it was actually mostly black when viewed from the front or back, Flynn said, which was consistent with what the other witnesses testified.
Flynn convicted Keeping of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon, but stayed the latter charge as it was included in the same incident. He acquitted Keeping of a charge of breaking and entering.
Keeping will be sentenced Aug. 30.
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