A seven-year-old boy on Monday testified behind a screen in court in the case of two men accused of kidnapping the Richmond youngster and his father.
The boy, who was five years old at the time of the August 2013 incident, sat beside his grandmother as he gave testimony in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.
Under questioning from Crown counsel Jeremy Hermanson, the boy, who can be identified only by the initials J.L. due to a publication ban, told a jury that he was telling the truth when he gave a statement to police shortly after the incident.
In the videotaped statement, which was played for the jury, the boy is seen telling a female police officer that at the time of the incident, he and his father were leaving his father’s Richmond hotel to get some food.
In the parkade of the hotel, the boy says in the video, some guys sneaked up on them and then his father opened the door of his parked Mercedes SUV.
“One of the guys was holding a gun and aiming at my dad,” the boy said.
Asked by the officer later in the interview how he felt when the gun was being pointed at his dad, the boy replied: “I was feeling that Daddy was gonna be killed.”
The boy told the cop that after the gun was pointed, his father was put in the back seat with him and that he himself was put in the car seat.
One of the “bad guys” got behind the wheel of the vehicle and drove it out of the parkade, but police soon arrived, said the boy.
Asked what he thought when the police arrived, the boy said: “The bad guys were going to jail.”
Under questioning from Hermanson, the boy told the jury that when he and his dad were confronted by the men, his dad’s hands were handcuffed behind him.
“Who was handcuffing your dad?” said Hermanson.
“One of the robbers,” the boy told the jury.
The two accused, Donald Stalker and Raymond Truong, have pleaded not guilty to several kidnapping-related charges.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Wedge told the jury not to draw any negative inferences either against the boy or the accused for the boy testifying behind a screen in court.
At the time of the abduction, the boy’s father, who can be identified only by the initials B.L., was in possession of $300,000 in cash.
Several versions of what the money was for were offered during B.L.’s testimony in court last week.
In one version, he said he had picked up the cash from a money exchange in Richmond, money that had been transferred to Canada from a man in China.
At the time of the alleged kidnapping, B.L. said, he was transporting the money to the Chinese man, who he said was in B.C. and wanted the cash to do some gambling.
