Defence seeks missing video footage
By Shurtz, Delon on June 27, 2020.
Delon Shurtz
lethbridge herald
A Lethbridge lawyer is upset video footage evidence has disappeared, and she’s hot happy with the explanation she’s received from the Crown’s office.
“They can’t just say ‘oops,'” Ingrid Hess said Thursday during a hearing in Lethbridge provincial court.
Hess said she plans to have a preliminary hearing for her client, Wade Nicholas Cross Child, but she still needs the video footage, which she expected to be part of the disclosure package. She told the judge the footage has somehow vanished.
“The Crown needs to provide some sort of explanation.”
Crown prosecutor Clayton Giles disagreed with Hess’s assertion, however, and said “we feel that the disclosure has been made.”
He said if Hess feels information is still missing, then a hearing will need to be held to determine whether there is additional disclosure to which defence is entitled.
Cross Child, who is in custody at the Lethbridge Correctional Centre, is charged with aggravated assault, assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon. The charges stem from incident at the supervised consumption site nearly four months ago in which a man sprayed a security guard in the face with a loaded syringe.
Just after 6 a.m. March 3 police responded to a report that a security guard working at the SCS in the 1000 block of 1 Avenue South had been assaulted by a client.
Security approached a man in the waiting area after he began to inject himself, and since drug use is only permitted in the consumption area, the security guard told the man to stop and go into the supervised area. The man became upset and shot the contents of the syringe – blood and narcotics – into the security guard’s face before he was taken into custody.
He is scheduled to return to court Tuesday.
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