The Crown has closed its case in the trial of a man accused of killing two people including an innocent teenager, and wounding a third person during a gang shooting on Vancouver’s busy Broadway Corridor in January 2018.
On Thursday, the prosecution called its final witness, a law enforcement expert in slang and coded or guarded language, to testify about the content of two intercepted jail phone calls with the accused, Kane Carter.
Detective Richard Duffus with the Toronto Police Service has been involved in drug investigations since the early 2000s and joined the force’s drug squad in 2013.
As the current supervisor of the unit, Duffus testified he focuses on street to mid-level enforcement and has gained his expertise in the language of gang and urban subculture through handling sources and speaking with individuals involved in investigations.
While slang is universal and involves the use of informal words and expressions, Duffus told the court that coded or guarded language refers to talking around an illicit subject to avoid police detection.
Court heard Duffus listened to two audio recordings of Carter while he was in custody at different times.
The first call was recorded in June 2019 at Ontario’s Central East Correctional Centre.
“They’re gonna charge me with a double,” Carter is heard saying.
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Duffus testified “double” meant double murder.
“They don’t have no evidence of me shooting,” the accused said in the audio played in court.
“They don’t have no eyewitnesses. Nobody can point me out at the scene.”
“I have, like, 200 bands on my head out there,” Carter continued.
When questioned by defence counsel, Duffus explained ‘bands’ means thousands and one band equals $1,000.
According to Duffus’ testimony, Carter was saying there’s a bounty on his head, “a contract to kill him for $200,000”.
Crown identified close to 40 terms in the calls and Duffus, who is of Jamaican descent, testified about their contextual meanings in Patois, the broken, lazy English spoken in Jamaica.
For example, he told the court ‘slappin’ means shooting, and ‘Snizzla’ is for Snapchat.
The second audio call was recorded at North Fraser Pretrial Centre in November 2022, months after Carter was arrested in Ontario and charged in the B.C. double murder.
“It’s on the Snizzla,” the accused is heard saying to an unknown male in the recording, before telling them to send a “message to a yute”.
Duffus testified ‘yute’ refers to a youth but can be used in different contexts.
“Yo, you remember the pet cat – put CAT in capitals – that brother used to live with?,” Carter said as he relayed the message in the call.
“The brother who passed away. It’s important that you make sure that you holla and check on the cat,” the accused said.
Duffus told the court “pet cat” was coded or guarded language and the pair was talking about “somebody.”
While Carter was sending a coded message through an unknown male to somebody else, Duffus agreed under cross-examination that he didn’t have information on the context, or knowing what the code means.
Earlier in the trial, the court was shown surveillance evidence from Jan. 13, 2018, showing a gunman, Kevin Whiteside, running down Broadway near Ontario Street and shooting wildly at a cab carrying his rival, Matthew Navas-Rivas.
Moments later, Whiteside was shot dead by Carter, the Crown alleges.
Navas-Rivas, Whiteside’s alleged target, escaped unhurt.
The Crown alleges Carter was in a burgundy van across the street, which was captured on surveillance video leaving the scene seconds after the gun battle.
Stray bullets had catastrophic consequences for the occupants of two other vehicles.
Alfred Wong, 15, died after being struck by a stray bullet while in the back seat of his parents’ car on his way home from a family dinner.
A second innocent person in another car was grazed by a stray bullet but survived.
Carter has pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of aggravated assault.
The trial resumes next week, at which time defence counsel is expected to begin making its case to the jury as to why Carter should be found not guilty.
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