The man who acted as a getaway driver in the abduction of a 17-year-old girl from a restaurant in Kirkland three years ago testified as a witness for the prosecution Wednesday at the trial of the victim’s two brothers.
On Tuesday, the 25-year-old Pierrefonds resident pleaded guilty to one count of forcible confinement just before the brothers’ trial began at the Montreal courthouse. A publication ban was imposed on the names of the three accused when their case was at the bail hearing stage in 2021. The publication ban was ordered to protect the identity of the victim.
The brothers, ages 25 and 26, have pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, forcible confinement, assault and uttering threats. They are on trial before Quebec Court Judge Thierry Nadon.
On July 26, 2021, the girl was working late at night at B12 Burger on St-Charles Blvd. in Kirkland when two men entered the restaurant after 11 p.m. A Montreal police detective who testified at the start of the trial said cameras positioned inside and outside the restaurant recorded images of the brothers following their younger sister to the kitchen area before one brother pulled her outside a back door.
One camera recorded images of a brother grabbing his sister’s cellphone from her hand and slamming it to the ground. One of the brothers was also recorded as he pulled his sister inside the driver’s Nissan Altima before it drove away.
On Wednesday, the driver said he didn’t know what was going to happen on the night in question.
He said he spent part of July 26, 2021, driving to Cornwall to eat at a restaurant that served Halal food while he and a friend were fasting that day. He said that when he and his friend returned to the West Island that night, one of the brothers called and asked if they could check in on his sister at her workplace.
“Other than our assumptions of what was going on, we didn’t know much,” the driver said on Wednesday without elaborating on what his “assumptions” were.
He said the friend he went to Cornwall with decided to go inside the restaurant to talk to the girl, while he waited outside in his Nissan. When his friend returned to the car, he said, his friend called one of the brothers and simply confirmed that she was working.
The prosecutor in the case then asked the driver why he decided to wait for what turned out to be more than 30 minutes before the brothers arrived at the restaurant.
“We just wanted to know if they wanted to play (a game called spikeball) or otherwise with us,” the driver said. “We just talked about day-to-day life (while they waited). We didn’t know what was going on.”
Shortly after the brothers entered the restaurant, the driver said, one of the brothers called his friend and asked that the Nissan be brought to the back of the restaurant.
The driver repeated that he did not know what was happening before the car arrived at the back of the restaurant. He described seeing what appeared to be an altercation between the brothers and some of the restaurant’s employees.
“I was just panicking. I was just trying to see what was going on,” the driver said. “It looked like a tug-of-war.”
At one point, he said, one of the brothers pulled the victim away from the group.
“It seemed like she wanted to get back to the restaurant,” he said, adding the brother then pulled the victim inside his Nissan.
“They started having an altercation once they were in the car. They spoke in Arabic,” the driver said, adding he didn’t understand what they said. “I was just focused on getting out of there. I heard the word police. ‘Police and drive.’ So two words (uttered by the brother who was inside his car at that point).”
He was then asked if he looked toward the 17-year-old girl as he drove off.
“No. I don’t have an explanation for that,” he said. “I was stressed and panicked.”
The abduction touched off an Amber Alert and, hours after it was issued, the driver showed up at a Montreal police station in the West Island with the girl. He was arrested on the spot.
Gary Martin, one of the defence lawyers in the case, noticed that, based on how he testified, the driver seemed to believe he didn’t commit a crime that day.
“So why did you plead guilty (on Tuesday)?” Martin asked.
“There were two or three instances where I could have been actively listening,” the driver said.
The trial will resume on Friday.