The lawyer for a man charged with second-degree murder after a March 7, 2023 home invasion robbery told a BC Supreme Court judge in Prince George on June 25 that his client acted in self defence.
During the second day of closing arguments, Jason LeBlond told Justice Ronald Tindale that Dakota Rayn Keewatin did what was necessary “and he did not do more than that” to defend himself and a woman in the Connaught Hill apartments.
Crown said he fired three fatal shots into another man while running in a hallway. The case is under a ban on publication of information about the victim.
Since 1993-born Keewatin chose not to testify, LeBlond said the court must rely on circumstantial evidence to analyze his thought process and the reasonableness of actions.
“As far as we can tell from the circumstances, he's at home, we don't know what he's doing, watching TV, resting, sitting, and then the door opens,” LeBlond said.
The information that he acted on, “colours his response and the reasonableness of his response.” That included the reaction of a witness who said, as she ran past Keewatin, “they’ve got guns.”
“The most reasonable conclusion on the evidence, and the most likely conclusion is, that (the victim) was shot very close to the doorway of apartment 107 while armed with multiple weapons and while continuing to engage with Mr. Keewatin,” LeBlond said. “I submit that Mr. Keewatin used the force necessary to defend himself, and that was the extent of the force.”
Keewatin, he said, came into the conflict unawares.
Court also heard that Keewatin barricaded a door, which is something he would not have done without being under threat.
“He believed, I think, on good reasonable inferences, that that threat still was in existence at the time that he closed the door, that's why he barricaded. He was trying to prevent intruders from re-entering the apartment,” LeBlond said.
Prosecutor Anna Novakovic said June 24 that Keewatin shot the victim while he was running away, evidence that Keewatin was not acting in self-defence, but intended to cause bodily harm or death.
Novakovic conceded that, for a short period of time at the doorway of the apartment, the victim “created a situation when where Mr. Keewatin was justified in defending himself.”
But, any justification of self defence quickly disappeared when the victim was disarmed, Keewatin took possession of the pistol and the victim began running down the hallway.
Keewatin’s trial happened almost two months after BC Supreme Court Justice John Gibb-Carsley acquitted Keewatin and co-accused Kerridge Andrew Lowley, 49, of aggravated assault and break-and-enter. They were charged after a grisly 2022 machete attack at a Prince George motel related to a drug debt dispute.
