The victim in the fatal Cactus Club altercation last year might have had a knife on him when he was fatally punched.
30-year-old Zachary Gaudette died just days after 26-year-old Cory Van Gilder punched him outside the restaurant on Banks Rd. on February 17, 2016. Van Gilder is on trial for manslaughter.
On Wednesday, the jury heard that during a police briefing the day after the incident, Constable Nadine Ricioppo, who rode in the back of the ambulance when Gaudette was taken to hospital, told fellow officers she found a small quantity of marijuana and a small knife in his pocket.
However police records show that while the marijuana and Gaudette’s clothes were seized, a knife was not.
Ricioppo said she couldn't recall finding a knife when defence lawyer Jeff Campbell asked her why she didn't seize it.
“I don’t recall a knife and my job is to seize evidence at the scene so it would have been marked if I would have found it,” she said.
Ricioppo also testified that the only injury she noted on Gaudette was a significant bruise on the left side of his neck.
Lead investigator Corporal Gina Horley, who testified after Ricioppo, also initially said she was not aware of Gaudette having a knife until she was presented with notes from the police briefing she attended where Ricioppo mentioned the knife.
Horley said the knife was not involved in the incident when Campbell asked her why it didn’t become an important part in their investigation, given that some witnesses had said they were worried Gaudette maybe had a weapon on him.
“If that knife was mentioned in the statements that we got from witnesses, saying he produced a knife or there was information there was a knife, then yes it would have been [important],” she said “but the fact that it was in possession of a person who was carrying all their possessions with them, did not appear in the course of our investigation to be an important piece of the actual incident.”
Gaudette had taken a Greyhound from Ontario to Kelowna just days before the incident and his backpack with various personal belongings inside was found near the Cactus Club.
Horley also admitted that a knife was not mentioned in a report to Crown counsel for charge considerations, although she said the Crown receives all evidence and would have seen there was a mention of a knife in police notes.
Horley was the last witness for the crown and the defence will begin calling on witnesses on Thursday.
Zachary Gaudette (Facebook)