The young woman doesn’t quite know what made her chase after an angry, knife-wielding man looking to fight on George Street one night last summer — she suspects it might have been partly liquid courage and partly loyalty to her boyfriend.
“Apparently I thought I could protect my boyfriend. I was also very drunk,” the woman told a St. John’s courtroom Wednesday morning.
She was testifying at Day 2 of the trial of Corey Michael Evans, 23, who is charged with aggravated assault and three counts of assault with a weapon in connection with an incident that saw one man stabbed and three others receive minor injuries.
Under questioning by prosecutor Erin Matthews, the young woman described how she and a group of friends had gone downtown after a birthday party, and some of them had ended up at Sal’s Pizza on George Street after the bars closed at 3 a.m.
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She was in the shop with her boyfriend and another woman, waiting for their pizza, when a commotion started. A man with tattoos covering his torso was involved, she said, and he turned his attention toward her boyfriend when her boyfriend attempted to get him to calm down.
At one point, she saw the man waving a knife.
“I flicked the pizza because I was mad,” the woman told the court, describing how she ran after the tattooed man and at one point tripped and fell on the sidewalk.
Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Randy Piercey, the woman said the man had backed up when she went after him, and didn’t try to hurt her.
On Tuesday, Halifax-based cameraman Edward McInnis described how he had been in town working on a film project and was having a few drinks on George Street the night in question, when a man approached him aggressively, wanting to fight. McInnis said he told the guy to go away and then watched as he crossed the street and kept up the aggressive behaviour toward other people.
McInnis said he decided to cross the street and confront the man outside Sal’s Pizza in an effort to get him to calm down, to no avail. At one point the man took off his shirt, revealing his tattoos, McInnis said, and he appeared to walk away.
Moments later, McInnis was stabbed in the back, receiving a serious puncture wound that landed him in hospital for 36 hours and made him unable to fly home as scheduled. He didn’t see who did it, and didn’t see a weapon.
Two witnesses who testified Tuesday – the young woman’s boyfriend and another member of their group of friends – told the court they did see a weapon: a small knife with a red handle. One of them said it was being wielded by a man with no shirt and tattoos covering his body, including one of what she called “the devil’s number,” 666, on his abdomen.
The tattooed man is alleged to be Evans.
Both of those witnesses said they left George Street and went to Water Street after they were asked to leave the pizza shop, and learned about the stabbing after police arrived. The man realized he had a cut on his hand, he told the court, but he was unable to say how he got it.
Another man who was inside the pizza shop at the time of the incident also testified, saying he, too, had tried to calm the tattooed man down. He ended up with a cut on his thumb that required five stitches, he said, though he wasn’t sure how he got it and hadn’t felt any pain, and just noticed the blood.
He managed to take a short video of the commotion with his phone, which he turned over to police when they arrived.
Const. Alex Mackey of the RNC’s Major Crime Unit told the court Evans was identified as a suspect after she sent that video and other images captured at the scene to other RNC officers, who said they recognized Evans’ tattoos.
Evans’ trial will not continue until Nov. 2, to allow Judge Colin Flynn time to consider the admissibility of certain evidence not yet presented in court.
Tara_bradbury@thetelegram.com
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
