Crown drops murder charges against two teens in beating death trial

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This article was published 03/05/2017 (3109 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Murder charges against two teenage boys have been dropped after their friends claimed not to remember much of what happened the night 28-year-old Wayne Bradford Wood was beaten to death in St. Theresa Point.

Wood was found lying on the road, suffering from severe head injuries on Sept. 25, 2013. Less than an hour later, he was pronounced dead, and five teen boys who were believed to have been involved in the beating were arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Three-and-a-half-years later, three of the five young men have pleaded guilty and served their youth sentences. All three friends were called to testify last week in the trial of a co-accused who was 17 at the time of Wood’s death — and that’s where the Crown’s case went off the rails.

After repeatedly being told “I don’t know” and “I can’t remember” by the co-accused and a friend who was alleged to have talked about the beating with the young men afterward, Crown attorney Kyle Parker said he decided to stay the charges against the remaining two teens, whose involvement in the beating remains uncertain.

“That’s a decision that the Crown makes in light of the evidence that this court has heard to date from the three co-accused,” Parker told Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Chris Martin on Friday, the third day of the trial. “Effectively there is no likelihood of conviction, in the Crown’s view.”

Dropping the charges was “the honourable thing to do under all of the circumstances,” Justice Martin said.

“The evidence was very difficult in terms of the likelihood of a conviction. Obviously, you were dependent upon three co-accused to — if I can put it this way — come through on their statements, and that was sorely lacking in all respects,” the judge said when he was informed of the Crown’s decision in court.

The judge offered his condolences to the victim’s relatives, who were present for the abruptly ended trial.

“If there’s any saving grace, it is that obviously three young men have stepped up and assumed responsibility for what happened here, and in that sense, perhaps there is some small measure of comfort, but I can’t imagine it’s very much in the circumstances of losing a loved one,” he said.

None of the teen boys involved can be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The three co-accused testified they had been out trying to get their hands on some marijuana when they encountered the victim, who they said appeared intoxicated and confronted them. The confrontation led to two of the boys hitting the victim in the head with a rock, followed by a group beating that left Wood dead. On the witness stand, the young men who already admitted their roles in the beating said they couldn’t remember or didn’t see how much involvement the other boys had.

One of them, a now 21-year-old man who was 17 at the time, initially refused to be sworn in to testify. He later agreed to tell the truth on the witness stand but responded “I don’t know” to many of the questions asked of him. He said it was too dark to see whether his friends were taking part in the beating. He said one of the two remaining co-accused “didn’t do anything. We sent him home.”

He became frustrated on the stand and questioned the point of his testimony.

“He’s already dead. I already pled out. I came out and I said, ‘I did it.’ Isn’t that… enough?” he said.

A lawyer for one of the two remaining co-accused said the teen had recently experienced mental-health issues and was found unfit to stand trial before the second-degree murder charge against him was dropped. The case was subject to a delay motion, which asked for the charges to be dropped because of the time it took to bring the matter to trial. The judge dismissed the motion but is expected to release his reasons for doing so at a later date.

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay