The Sechelt provincial courthouse was packed this week for the trial of five Gibsons men accused in the hockey stick assaults in Pender Harbour during the 2004 May Day festivities. Friends and relatives of the victims and of the accused often filled the benches in the courtroom.
The five accused men, Daniel Wood, Daryl Costello, Drew Johnson, Paul Johnson and Michael Webb, listened quietly as a string of witnesses described vicious beatings they saw or received in the early hours of May 23. The witnesses were skateboarders or friends of skateboarders, part of a group of about 100 people who were camping that night on private property in Kleindale.
Many had come from off-Coast to attend the longboarding competition in Madeira Park the next day, and they said they were socializing peacefully when several vehicles arrived, full of uninvited people who soon began attacking the campers.
The first violent incident was against an 18-year-old Pender Harbour skateboarder who lived just up the road from the campsite. He testified that he was talking with friends when a black sports car pulled up and blocked his driveway.
"I asked the driver if he could move the car. He told me not to be mouthy," testified the teen. "I said, I'm not trying to be mouthy, but please move your vehicle. He walked up to me and struck me right in the chin and continuously hit me in the back of the head."
Another skateboarder pulled the assailant off, and the 18-year-old went home with bruises on his face, a bump on the head and what he believes was a dislocated jaw. He described his attacker as "buff" and weighing about 200 pounds - some 40 pounds more than him.
Bricin Lyons, organizer of the longboarding competition, testified that when he heard of that incident, he went to the strangers and asked them to leave. They responded with curses and the atmosphere was "tense," Lyons said, so he called 911 on a cell phone and asked for help from the police.
"I knew there was going to be a fight," he testified.
When that fight erupted a few minutes later, he said, a truck pulled up and one man took a hockey stick from the back."He had it in his arms like a hockey player would. I was just sitting there thinking, no, he's not going to use this," said Lyons. "He ran right into a pile of people and started swinging the stick. People were all over after that four to six hockey sticks came out of the truck. They just ran up to groups of people and started swinging. They were hitting everybody. I seen my dad get hit. I got hit. I seen Tony get hit. I seen a guy get hit in his head. I seen a girl get hit."
Lyons called 911 again at that point. In the audio recording of that brief call, his voice was tense and angry as he told the 911 operator, "They pulled out some sticks and they unloaded them all on us." Lyons called 911 a third time as the attackers left. In the recording of the third call, a babble of upset voices could be heard in the background as Lyons shouted at the operator, "Everyone's injured."
Cheryl Jensen, whose 18-year-old son Brandon suffered a severe concussion that night, said it was painful for her to sit in court and hear her son calling out on the 911 recording.
"For me to sit there and listen to my son's voice on that third call, and know he's injured, is brutal," said Jensen, who is a paramedic.
She said her son has not fully recovered from that injury, either physically or psychologically, and has had to put his plans to become a firefighter on hold because of the danger of a repeat concussion.
"He's totally changed," she said. "He was happy-go-lucky, looking to meet people, community minded He doesn't trust anyone anymore."
As of June 15, six other witnesses from the boarder campsite had testified, describing similar attacks with fists, feet and hockey sticks from the intruders, whom some described as the "Gibsons group." Various witnesses testified they fought back to defend themselves and their friends, but they all insisted they were the victims of an unprovoked attack and not taking part in a consensual fight. One boarder, known by the nickname Bag of Doughnuts, was taken to St. Mary's Hospital by ambulance and received stitches to both sides of his right eye.
Another witness said he threw a bottle at the assailants' truck to draw away their attention, in an attempt to help his friends who were "getting slaughtered" in the fight.
The trial is scheduled to continue until June 28. Crown prosecutor Trevor Cockfield said he plans to call 20 civilian witnesses and eight police witnesses.
Proving the identity of the assailants is emerging as a key issue in this trial. Many of the witnesses said they could not recognize people in the courtroom as definitely being among the attackers, because it had been too dark to see faces clearly.
