A man accused of attempting to kill one of his housemates over a car-damage dispute in 2022 pleaded not guilty Monday as his trial got underway in B.C. Supreme Court in Victoria.
Mohamed Daud Omar, 30, is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and break-and-enter related to the injuries that Sunday Aro, 33, sustained on the morning of Feb. 6, 2022.
Justice Matthew Kirchner is presiding over the judge-alone trial, which is scheduled to take two weeks.
Court will hear from witnesses living with Omar and Aro in the two-storey house on Lang Street in Saanich at the time of the incident, as well as police officers who responded to the scene, Crown prosecutor Kate Dutton said in opening remarks.
Aro testified Monday via video link that he pushed Omar in the chest on the morning of Feb. 6, 2022, when he confronted Omar for damaging another housemate’s car overnight.
The Saturday night before, Omar had joined the housemates for drinks in their shared home for about an hour and everything seemed to be fine, Aro said.
Aro and his two other housemates had gone out to the movies, ate Chinese food, and picked up a bottle of Tanqueray gin at the B.C. Liquor Store in Hillside Mall to drink at home earlier that night, he said.
But in the morning, after Aro found out that one of their housemates, Ling Pang, had her car damaged overnight, he confronted Omar about the incident in Omar’s second-floor bedroom, Aro testified.
“We got into a fight,” said Aro, who works in finance. “I held him down and kept saying: ‘Why would you do this? Why would you do this?’ ”
Aro said Omar punched him in the face and verbally threatened to kill him twice during the fight.
Omar went downstairs to the house’s shared living space right after the fight broke off, he said.
When Aro headed downstairs, Omar met him partway up the stairs and stabbed him in the upper left arm, Aro said.
“Blood splashed everywhere in the stairway,” he told the court.
Aro said he saw the knife blade break and fly off after he was stabbed and was able to retreat to his room on the ground floor. “That gave me the opportunity to run.”
He locked himself in, made a makeshift tourniquet from his clothes to stanch the bleeding in his arm, and dialed 911, Aro said.
While the call was being made, Omar tried to break into his bedroom and smashed the glass panelling in the door, Aro testified.
Aro said he then opened his bedroom door to try to get to the house’s main entrance and out of the house.
As he neared the exit, Omar swiped at him with a second knife, cutting him in two places near his left eye, Aro said.
Aro said he believes Omar’s swing was aimed at his neck.
Aro, who had been living with Omar for about six or seven months by then, said their relationship had become “shaky” after three or four months. He said he didn’t approve of how Omar was behaving.
Under cross-examination, Aro said he had confronted Omar about his loud music-playing habits at least once before the Feb. 6, 2022, altercation.
Omar is representing himself in the trial. Appointed counsel John Turner is cross-examining witnesses who do not want to be cross-examined by Omar, including Aro.
Aro denied a suggestion from Turner that he had punched Omar multiple times during the fight about Pang’s car and said he couldn’t remember if anyone had tried to pull him off Omar.
During Monday’s proceedings, Omar tried to get a 911 call recording made during the incident to be excluded from the evidence, arguing that the noises in the recording “could have been staged” by Aro.
Kirchner ruled against Omar’s request.
Around the two-minute mark in the recording, in which Aro is reporting the incident to first responders, banging sounds and yelling could be heard.
“We have an active stabbing in progress,” the unidentified emergency call-taker could be heard saying shortly after.
Aro said the banging sounds were “the exact moment” when Omar tried to smash his way into the room.
Aro’s cross-examination is scheduled to continue when the trial resumes Wednesday.
