During the second day of a trial in Rossland Provincial Court, a defence lawyer continued to hammer at the credibility of the man who accuses a Trail firefighter of assaulting him in a downtown alley in April 2023.
Mason Goulden completed his cross-examination of Darryl Wong today, trying to raise doubts about Wong’s ability to remember who attacked him.
Wong has accused Greg Ferraby and two other firefighters of beating him up, leaving him with severe injuries. Ferraby is accused of assault causing bodily harm and uttering threats. However, charges against the other two were stayed shortly before the trial began.
Goulden has repeatedly raised inconsistencies in Wong’s statements to police versus what he now says, but Wong has insisted that he always knew who his attackers were, and that any discrepancies are due to post-traumatic stress he suffered.
Wong also said his natural inclination is to brush things under the rug.
“If it wasn’t for my sisters, we wouldn’t be here right now,” he said. “I would deal with it how I always deal with it … If it was up to me, I would not have reported to police. If I could get up after that attack, I would have run and hid somewhere. My sisters would not let this slide and that’s why we’re here today.”
Wong denied that his sisters told him that Ferraby was the man who attacked him.
Ferraby is also accused of threatening Wong 10 days earlier. Wong previously testified that Ferraby approached him on the Esplanade, accused him of following his niece and her mother around town, and threatened him. Wong said he denied the accusation and phoned police.
Goulden also pointed to a September 2023 statement Wong gave to police where he said the alley where the attack happened was dark and that he didn’t remember what Ferraby looks like.
“Looking back at the statements, it doesn’t matter what I said,” Wong replied, adding that PTSD caused him to suppress memories, and that he used drugs to cope.
Goulden asked if Wong was suppressing memories or wasn’t being truthful when he made his police statement.
“I didn’t want to be there for the police lineup,” Wong replied. “I wasn’t going to go there, but my sister takes me to all my appointments. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have gone.”
Wong said he had “a lot of issues” and “was very complicated” at the time of the incident. However, he said he has not used drugs in over two years.
Referring to his police statement, Wong said: “I should have spent the whole weekend [since the first day of the trial] reading this stuff, but I can’t. I was seeing more things in my head, and I don’t want to go there … It’s not pleasant for me to go back to and read.”
Goulden suggested Wong didn’t know the names of the people accused of attacking him until he was told after the fact, but he continued to insist that was not the case.
He also insisted it was “impossible” that he had mistaken Ferraby for someone else. He testified that he had not being using drugs immediately prior to the attack.
Police officers testify
Second to testify in the trial this afternoon was RCMP Cst. Ator Isak, who said she responded when a member of the downtown shelter staff reported an assault in a neighbouring alley. She said she found Wong on the ground but no one else nearby.
Judge Craig Sicotte allowed Crown prosecutor Bryan Pankoff to ask Isak what Wong told her when she arrived. She testified that he said: “Greg and two of his friends beat him up.”
Cpl. Sheldon Arychuk then testified that he took Wong’s complaint about being accused of following a young girl. He said Wong was “very upset” and wanted the officer to pull surveillance footage to disprove the accusation. Arychuck said that wasn’t going to happen, but Wong’s complaint would be written down.
Arychuck said Wong was “very animated” and “emphatic” that he was the wrong guy, but he did not tell the officer that he had been threatened.
“The totality of the file was concerned about the accusation,” Arychuck said. “He felt it wrong that someone accuse him of following a young girl.”
Sister speaks
Last to testify today was Wong’s younger sister Diane, who said that she had a turbulent relationship with her brother over several decades, believing him to be “spoiled, selfish, and incompetent” and someone who made bad choices that she disagreed with. She said they didn’t speak for four years at one point.
She said her brother was homeless from August 2022 to June 2023, when their parents, who live in Vancouver, begged her and her younger sister to take him in. She said they had regular communication with him during this time.
Since the alleged attack, she said her brother has “accepted what’s happened to him. He knows he’s a good person. He’s become sober. He’s processed a lot of the trauma and been committed to counselling.”
Diane Wong said she knew Greg Ferraby as a respected firefighter and a customer at Cafe Michael, the family restaurant. She said she also knew Ferraby’s wife, who worked at two daycares that her children attended.
She recalled that during COVID, the restaurant removed an item from the menu and she received a call from Ferraby, who was upset about it: “He didn’t yell at me, just questioned it.” She said she explained and apologized.
Diane Wong is expected to continue her testimony when the trial resumes on Thursday.
The Crown indicated it will call one further police witness. The defence hasn’t indicated whether it will call any evidence, but it expects to submit a couple of Charter of Rights and Freedoms applications that will take half a day. The trial is expected to continue through Friday. The defence suggested an extra half-day may need to be scheduled for closing arguments.
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