After listening to Crown witnesses for two-and-a-half days, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Adam Germain asked the lawyer representing Jared Eliasson if he would present a case.
“We will not be calling any evidence,” defence lawyer Zack Elias said.
Eliasson is accused of a crowbar attack on an Edmonton woman in March 2017. At the time, police described it as a case of road rage.
Chelsey Schendzielorz suffered two broken arms in the assault. The Crown has alleged her attacker was trying to hit her in the head with the crowbar, but she blocked the blows with her arms.
Eliasson admitted to having an initial encounter with Schendzielorz earlier in the morning while he was out delivering newspapers. His car was stopped in an intersection and she honked at him three times before he moved. That encounter was captured on the victim’s dashboard camera.
Police were able to read some of the letters and numbers on Eliasson’s licence plate.
A screen grab from dashboard camera footage that Edmonton police used to partially identify the licence plate of the vehicle on the right hand side. (Edmonton Police Service )
Schendzielorz drove a few blocks to her house and parked on the street. She spotted a silver car approaching her vehicle. The driver stopped beside her, then backed up to park behind her SUV. She assumed it was the same driver she had honked at a few minutes earlier.
Staff Sgt. Ian Brooks testified Wednesday that police assumed the same thing, though he added, “You can’t see the licence plate in the second showing the way you can in the first.”
The crowbar attack is not captured on videotape, although there is a sickening crunch heard as the weapon glances off the victim’s vehicle. Schendzielorz is heard saying, “Ouch”.
Thanks to the dash cam footage and tips from the public, police were able to arrest and charge Eliasson one day after Schendzielorz was attacked.
A screen capture from the videotaped interview conducted by Staff Sgt. Ian Brooks (left) with Jared Eliasson on March 8, 2017. (Edmonton Police Service )
Brooks conducted a two-hour interview with Eliasson that he said “felt like a cat-and-mouse exercise.”
When he was asked by the Crown about his opinion of the accused during the interview, Brooks replied, “I would say the overall flavour was almost a little bit childish.”
The defence noted Eliasson issued 17 denials over the course of the two-hour interview that got increasingly testy.
By the end, Brooks said he was “absolutely” exasperated.
Eliasson is not in custody. If he is found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.