He made it obvious from the moment he walked into the courtroom to testify Monday afternoon that he didn’t want to be there.
“I don’t have time for this,” the 35-year-old man — the victim of an alleged stabbing — told the judge.
The man had been called to Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court in St. John’s to testify at the trial of Christopher Michael Tucker.
Tucker has been charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and breaches of court orders in connection with an altercation alleged to have happened in the parking lot of Shoppers Drug Mart on Lemarchant Road on June 2, 2016.
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Police responded to a report that there had been a fight and someone had been stabbed. By the time officers arrived on the scene, the two men reported to have been involved were gone. According to police, witnesses described a violent assault.
Officers located an injured man, who was admitted to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
On the stand Monday, that man told the court he had received a stab wound to the lower left side of his torso and spent a month or so in hospital recovering. He couldn’t remember any details of how he got the injury.
“I can’t really recall it,” he testified. “This is a while back for me. It’s not something I thought about over and over.”
The man said he was at the Shoppers Drug Mart building that day and he remembered talking to police at the hospital, but didn’t remember the nature of the conversation.
“I’m sure I was probably upset. I’m sure there was probably a lot going on,” he said in response to prosecutor Jennifer Colford’s questions.
When asked if he knew Tucker, the man said no, though he knew his name.
Const. Andrea Crane of the RNC’s forensic identification division also testified Monday, presenting a series of photos she took in the Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot the day of the incident. Among them were pictures of a knife blade and a cigarette pack police found on the pavement, as well as red drops consistent with blood.
Crane said there was no blood visible on the blade or the cigarette package, nor any fingerprints recovered from it. A DNA analysis was not done, given the victim had declined to give a sample for comparison. Crane said the man also refused to let her take photos of his injuries.
The trial will continue Tuesday morning.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
