The victim testified that he grabbed a fire poker and went to the alley to confront the man he believed threw the mower, and was stabbed.
What began as a backyard fire with family became a back alley brawl after a dispute broke out between neighbours in Saskatoon’s Pleasant Hill neighbourhood.
Testifying in Saskatoon provincial court on Tuesday, a man said he and his wife were hit with a lawnmower thrown over their neighbour’s fence in the 400 block of Avenue T South on Nov. 27, 2022.
The man said he grabbed a four-foot metal poker from the fire and went to confront the man he believed had thrown the mower. He told court the man stabbed him five times during a scuffle and said “Die motherf****er” as he walked away.
Garry Moise Laurin is on trial, charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon. He pleaded guilty to an unrelated mischief charge.
Court heard Laurin was visiting his sister, who lived next door to the couple.
The man said it started when his female neighbour asked, from behind her fence, if they were having a fire. The man said he replied “Yes” and then heard the woman say something back, to which he replied “Shut up, bitch.”
Under cross-examination, he told defence lawyer Britney Cheyne that the angry remark stemmed from months of tension that had been building between the neighbours, mostly over excessively loud music.
The man told Crown prosecutor Paul Scott that a man started yelling and kicking his fence. He said there was silence and he turned around, assuming the argument had ended, until a mower soared over the fence, hitting him on the head and his wife in the face.
He clarified during cross-examination that the mower had no motor, estimating the shell weighed between 50 and 80 pounds.
The man said he saw his wife on the ground and grabbed the poker, went to the alley and hit the back of his neighbour’s fence to call the man out.
He told court that he intended to hit him as “payback” for throwing the mower, but dropped his weapon after one of two women who came into the alley with Laurin hit him on the back with a crutch.
He said he saw a six-inch steak knife fall as he lay on the ground trying to block Laurin’s punches. Laurin picked it up and stabbed him five times, he said.
He was hospitalized for six days, off work for six weeks and has been on long-term disability since being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he testified.
“I’m still trying to get my life back.”
The man admitted he can’t definitively say that the man he was arguing with over the fence was the same one he fought in the alley, “But there was only one man there.”
When Cheyne asked if he saw Laurin throw the lawnmower, the man said it had to be him because one of the women was on crutches and the other was “90 pounds.”
Cheyne suggested Laurin did not throw the mower, and stabbed the man in self-defence after the man approached him with a weapon and stabbed him in the hand while on top of him.
“False. One hundred per cent false,” the man replied.
His wife told court that after she was able to stand, she saw two women and a man attacking her husband in the alley. She said she grabbed an axe from the garage, but dropped it during a tussle with the women. Her husband told her to stop because he’d been stabbed, she said.
In court, she identified Laurin as the man she saw walk past her in the alley, laughing.
The trial is scheduled to continue on Wednesday.
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