Video allegedly capturing accused double-murderer shown in court
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2019 01:11:36 +0000
Surveillance video taken in a Canadian Tire store that the Crown says implicates a Vancouver man in the murder of a Marpole couple was played in court Monday.
The closed-circuit television footage was introduced during the testimony of Stephen Pointon, the store’s general manager, at the trial of Rocky Rambo Wei Nam Kam, who has pleaded not guilty to the Sept. 26, 2017 second-degree murder of Richard Jones, 68, and his wife, Dianna Mah-Jones, 64.
In their opening, the Crown said the footage taken on Sept. 13, 2017 was provided to police after a detective determined that items seized from the crime scene, including a hatchet, a knife and a baseball cap, may have been purchased at a nearby Canadian Tire store.
Prosecutors say the images on the video depict Kam entering the store and then walking through the aisles before buying three items — a hatchet, a pair of gardening gloves and a baseball cap.
Under questioning from Crown counsel Jeffrey LaPorte, Pointon told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Laura Gerow that he had reviewed the video that was turned over to police.
He said the video generally shows a man in a two-toned hoodie that the Crown alleges was Kam checking in his backpack at the customer service desk before proceeding to the knife section and examining several items before putting them back and then going into the hunting section of the store.
The man comes out with an axe and some gardening gloves, picks up a baseball cap and then purchases the items with cash, said Pointon.
Vancouver police Det. Simon Cracknell testified that he had earlier done a Google search using a crime scene photo of the hatchet which was found on the front lawn of the couple’s home on West 64th Ave. along with a knife.
First he searched the bar code and got no hits, then checked a sticker on the other side and discovered the name of a distributor that supplies Canadian Tire, Cracknell told the judge.
Researching hatchets sold at the store, he found an image of a hatchet that appeared to be the same as the one found at the crime scene, he said.
The detective said he went to the Canadian Tire store that was nearest to the home, located on Southwest Marine Drive, and obtained records of recent sales of the particular brand of hatchet.
One particular transaction stood out: that on Sept. 13, 2017, someone had purchased a hatchet with the same stock number as the one at the crime scene.
The detective said he was able to obtain video footage from the store that showed the purchase of a hatchet, gardening gloves and a baseball hat.
At the time he wasn’t aware of the significance of the gloves and the hat, but learned that a cap had been left at the scene, he said.
The Crown said in their opening that DNA testing has revealed that the blood of the victims was found on the hatchet found on the front lawn and also on the baseball hat found in the kitchen of the home.
The trial is expected to continue Tuesday.