A judge on Friday convicted a man who ended up with a police officer on the hood of his car, hammering on the windshield with a gun, in a Yellowknife parking lot.
The scene would have looked like “part of a movie” to any resident who saw it, Judge Donovan Molloy stated, describing the January 18 incident.
“Any residents of Yellowknife’s Crestview Manor looking out their windows may have thought a movie was being filmed outside,” Molloy said in his written decision to convict Garry Taylor, who was behind the wheel of the car.
“A lone man unsuccessfully attempted to stop a car exiting the Manor’s parking lot by drawing a firearm, jumping onto the car’s hood and smashing the car’s windshield,” Molloy continued. “After falling off the hood, the man watched the car drive away.”
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Taylor had been wanted by RCMP for days when a plain-clothes officer spotted him near Crestview Manor, on 52 Avenue.
According to Molloy’s written decision, the officer had testified he was trying to pin down Taylor’s location when he found himself face-to-face with Taylor driving a car.
Recounting the Crown’s evidence, Molloy said the officer had recalled holding up a hand to get Taylor to stop, then displaying his badge and yelling “police!’ at the vehicle.
When the car continued driving toward him, the officer “pulled his sidearm and pointed it at the car,” the Crown had contended. “Given the closeness of the vehicle and seeing nowhere to go, he jumped onto the hood of the car.”
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Now on the vehicle’s hood, the officer recalled screaming his status as a police officer at the driver. “Using his sidearm in the fashion of a hammer, he beat on the windshield,” Molloy said the Crown told the court.
At one point, with Taylor trying to shake him off, the Crown alleged the officer’s “grip on the windshield wipers was the only leverage he had.”
The Crown said the officer, who fell off the hood shortly thereafter, did not suffer serious injury in the incident. Taylor, who was in the car with a female passenger, did not stop.
In his defence, Taylor – who was banned from driving at the time – told the court he had been under the impression the officer, in plain clothes, was trying to carjack him. Judge Molloy, however, did not accept Taylor’s assertion he had not realized the man on his hood was a police officer.
Molloy wrote there was “no realistic basis” for Taylor to instead conclude an attempted carjacking was taking place. While Taylor claimed neither he nor his passenger could hear what the man was yelling, Molloy wrote: “The fact that the car’s windows were rolled up and some music may have been playing would not have distracted them from the man on the hood of their car.”
Molloy convicted Taylor of assaulting a peace officer with a weapon, driving while disqualified, dangerous operation of a vehicle, and failure to comply with an earlier undertaking.
