A Barrie man is on trial at the local courthouse after a booze-fuelled incident in 2021 at a downtown hotel that led to another city man sustaining stab wounds.
Rehano Harold has been charged with assault causing bodily harm. The judge-alone trial is taking place in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Last week, the court heard testimony from 33-year-old victim Aaron Lewis. Lewis and his girlfriend, who is now his fiancée, rented a room at the downtown Barrie hotel to celebrate Harold’s girlfriend’s birthday. Though the two men did not know one another, both women were friends.
According to Lewis’s testimony, Harold and his girlfriend had rented their own room in the same hotel.
“I had seen him around, but no,” Lewis testified when asked whether he and Harold were friends, shortly after taking the stand in a tailored grey suit.
Pandemic restrictions at the time of the incident prohibited large gatherings in bars and restaurants.
The evening at the hotel was a way for the quartet to celebrate the woman's birthday without breaking rules that were in place.
Lewis testified that the night was going well and the group was enjoying music while playing a drinking game.
But things began to unravel when Harold couldn’t find his car keys. It soon became apparent that they were deliberately hidden to prevent him from driving away while under the influence of alcohol.
“I wanted no part of hiding his keys,” testified Lewis, adding that it was “stupid” to drive while impaired, but that there was a better way to handle the tension that was starting to build in the hotel room than hiding Harold’s keys, or for him to drive drunk.
“You can get a taxi, Uber,” Lewis said from the stand, adding that driving away impaired from that location would have a high probability of attracting police attention and being charged with drunk driving.
Suddenly, without warning and while turned away from Harold, Lewis said he felt a sharp pain in his back that night.
“It was freakish — he cut me for no reason,” Lewis testified. “I was losing a lot of blood, adrenaline was (flowing), things were going downhill."
With searing pain, Lewis testified that he turned around only to be slashed on his left cheek, with the knife travelling toward his eye.
Scarring was still visible on his face in court.
According to Lewis’s testimony, he says he managed to subdue the attack by slamming Harold’s head into a wall, which dislodged the knife from his possession, but not before he was again slashed on the leg.
Lewis said he retreated to the washroom to assess his condition and, as he did, Harold’s mood swung wildly back to being subdued, expressing regret at what he had done. That was until the melee continued outside as others, including Lewis’s mother, arrived on the scene.
According to Lewis’s testimony, Harold became agitated again and appeared to make contact with his mother.
“Him touching my mom just set me off,” Lewis said from the stand.
He was treated at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) in Barrie for knife wounds to his back, face and leg.
Lewis was later visited by police at his parents’ house.
A photo of a knife that was recovered from the scene was entered into evidence and Lewis was asked if he recognized it.
“That’s the knife, because I remember the handle,” he testified, shortly before court was recessed for the day without the defence cross-examining the witness.
Rehano, a former standout athlete at Bear Creek Secondary School, was dressed smartly in a sport jacket and sat impassively throughout the testimony.
The trial continues, with the Crown expected to wrap up its evidence today before the case is turned over to the defence.
