Oak Bay father tells murder trial storing drugs wasn't a worry for girls' safety
Credit to Author: The Canadian Press| Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2019 20:20:51 +0000
The Crown asked a Vancouver Island man who denies killing his two young daughters whether he was worried about the safety of the girls when two men came to drop off a bag presumed to contain drugs months before their deaths.
Andrew Berry is charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of six-year-old Chloe Berry and four-year-old Aubrey Berry in Oak Bay on Christmas Day in 2017.
Berry says the men who came to his apartment in March 2017 dropped off what he thought were drugs that he was storing in exchange for a delay of a payment to a loan shark named Paul.
The Crown’s theory is that Berry killed the girls and then tried to kill himself, but Berry says he owed thousands of dollars to the loan shark and was attacked in his apartment.
Berry says his daughters were in the apartment watching a movie while the two men hid the bag in his closet.
Crown counsel Patrick Weir asked whether it occurred to Berry that the girls should have “zero part” in the situation.
Berry said in hindsight, it was “potentially very, very dangerous” but at the time he didn’t think it was a big deal.