THUNDER BAY – Blood present on the T-shirt and hands of George Gerard’s alleged killer is essentially a match to the victim, according to a forensic analysis report.
Evidence collected from suspect Nicholas Necan, who is standing trial on the charge of second degree murder in the January 2016 death of the 60-year-old Gerard, resulted in a DNA profile from which the victim can’t be excluded as the source.
Tara Brutzki, a forensic scientist at the Centre of Forensic Sciences’ northern regional laboratory in Sault Ste. Marie, testified on Thursday the random match probability of the DNA originating from a source other than Gerard was one in 21 quadrillion.
Nearly two years ago, police responded to a 911 call at the Casablanca Apartments complex on North Simpson Street where they encountered an assault in progress in one of the units.
Thunder Bay Police Service Const. Matt Hanchuk, one of the first responding officers, had previously testified that Necan was beating a man on the floor with a piece of wood and had to use pepper spray to stop the attack.
The ensuing investigation located a pair of blood-covered sweatpants in the building’s hallway. Blood from the same DNA profile that is likely Gerard’s was also found on those sweatpants, as well as inside the apartment on the east living room wall, south hallway wall and living room ceiling.
A DNA profile, from which Necan can’t be excluded, was found on a wine bottle inside the apartment. Brutzki said the random match probability of that evidence originating from a source other than the accused was one in 180 trillion.
Witness Cindy Fobister told the court she was napping on her living room couch on the afternoon of Jan. 28, 2016 and woke up to a man she didn’t recognize in the kitchen and dining room of her apartment. She described him as seeming to be “an angry man,” who banged his hands and arms on her coffee table and caused her to feel intimidated. She said she feared antagonizing him.
The man eventually was persuaded by a fellow occupant to leave the apartment.
A short time later, her aunt Peggy Guerin, went down the hall to visit Gerard, a childhood friend, to ask for cigarettes. Minutes later she came back screaming and crying that “he’s killing my friend.”
Guerin and Fobister, along with two others in the apartment, rushed down the hall to Gerard’s residence but stopped as soon as they got in the doorway.
“There was blood everywhere,” Fobister tearfully testified, adding Gerard was laying on the floor with his face covered in blood and “pulpy,” while the assailant was hunched down on the couch and holding a piece of wood.
Fobister said emergency responders wheeled Gerard past her apartment and she could hear him attempting to breathe.
Gerard was pronounced dead at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre about an hour later.
“I could still hear him. I still see him in my dreams at night,” Fobister recalled of the scene. She said that Guerin and one of the other occupants of apartment have since passed, with both drinking heavily leading up to their deaths.
The crown is also expected to call OPP Det. Const. John Frankcom, a blood stain pattern analysis, and forensic pathologist Kona Williams as expert witnesses.
