The witness made it clear that if there was any plan at all the night London musician Daniel Fawcett was fatally stabbed, it certainly wasn’t one that would leave him dead.
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“Dan thought I was going to be selling him drugs. We thought we were going to beat him up,” said the reluctant Crown witness at the second-degree murder trial of Craig Allan.
“There was no advanced plan … It was just we were going to meet him and he was going to get punched out. That’s all it was. It wasn’t we’re going to meet him and we’re going to kill him.”
The witness, whose identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, made it clear from the beginning of their testimony that they weren’t totally willing to be at the Superior Court of Justice trial, let alone be the key Crown witness, in the death of Fawcett, 52, in Gibbons Park in the early morning of Nov. 6, 2022.
“Do you know who stabbed him?” assistant Crown attorney Marcia Hilliard asked the witness at the beginning of the testimony Monday.
“I don’t want to be here,” the witness said.
There was a pause. “Craig,” said the witness.
“How do you know that Craig stabbed him?” Hilliard asked
“I was there, kind of,” was the reply.
After that, the witness pieced together what they said led up to the stabbing of the former guitarist for the rock band Helix and with regrets, pointed the finger at Allan, 50, also known as “Chilli” as the person who stabbed Fawcett in the heart.
“I don’t believe Chilli meant to kill anybody. I really don’t believe that. And I don’t believe he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. I don’t believe that for a second,” they said.
During the testimony, the witness gave a glimpse into the lives of London’s drug addicted like them, describing sleeping at cheap hotels, getting high and managing by selling drugs.
“We live a lifestyle that you guys don’t live,” the witness said to Hilliard. “And to explain that lifestyle to people that have never lived it, until you live a lifestyle of addiction, or you have addiction in your life of that sense in your life, you’re never going to understand this lifestyle.
“You don’t understand the dynamics of what we have to live through. .. For people like us on the street at that moment, we didn’t have choices.”
The witness testified that they had been Fawcett’s drug dealer and Allan was a friend and associate. They introduced Allan to Fawcett. “I was selling drugs to Dan or we were getting high. Ultimately, it would be because I was selling drugs.”
The witness and Allan were addicted to crack cocaine and were consuming large quantities daily at the time of Fawcett’s death. “Drugs do a lot of things to a lot of people,” the witness said.
The witness said they had known Fawcett for a couple of years. However, they said over the time of their connection, the musician had assaulted them, stole drugs and money from them, and routinely pestered them through texts and emails.
The plan that night was to rough Fawcett up. The witness said that they and Allan had been awake for about three days when they set their idea into action.
Hilliard showed the witness a string of surveillance video clips that captured the witness and Allan at a London hotel, in a Tim Hortons parking lot and then in the parking lot of a building on Grosvenor Street near the park.
Allan was dressed in a black sweatshirt and black track pants. The pair separated about 10 to 15 minutes before the witness met up with Fawcett.
Another short piece of video showed the witness and Fawcett walking through the parking lot toward the park. The witness said that was about a minute before Fawcett was attacked.
“I set Dan up,” the witness said. “I lured him into Gibbons Park. I walked him into the park. Somebody jumped out of the bushes, all in black. I kept walking.
“First, I heard somebody yell at him asking if he liked to drug and rape women. I heard Dan yell, ‘You got me’. “
The witness said less than a minute later they turned around and saw Allan. He said to them to “call a cab and catch,” then throwing them the witness’s folding knife.
The witness said they shoved the knife down their pants and later washed blood off it in the bathroom at a hotel and put it under the mattress until the next day.
“He wasn’t supposed to die. It was more that he was supposed to get beat up,” the witness repeated.
“It just went bad, it went south, he wasn’t supposed to die.”
The witness said the cab never showed up and the pair walked together briefly before splitting up, then connecting again on Adelaide Street. They eventually left London in a car that the witness stole from a fitness club and the knife was thrown away during the drive.
There was no discussion about what happened over the next three days until the witness said they did an internet search on Fawcett’s name and discovered he had died.
The witness and Allan had a conversation and “he looked like he had remorse. Craig said he didn’t need to take the knife with him. I think maybe he felt bad that Dan was dead.”
Hilliard took the witness through a long list of text messages and emails between them and Fawcett, including some where the witness used threatening language. The witness agreed they wrote some of them, but denied being the author of others.
Some of those messages were sent in the hour before Fawcett was stabbed in the park.
“I don’t think Craig was a bad guy.. It was a strange situation that went to (expletive),” the witness said.
“Chilli got stuck in the middle of something he shouldn’t have been in.”
Allan’s defence lawyers are expected to begin their cross-examination on Tuesday.