A Trail firefighter accused of assaulting and threatening a homeless man has been found not guilty.
Greg Ferraby was acquitted today in Rossland Provincial Court of attacking Darryl Wong in a downtown alley in 2023.
Judge Craig Sicotte issued a rare oral ruling from the bench after hearing closing arguments. Crown prosecutor Bryan Pankoff maintained a “conjunction” of circumstantial evidence was enough to convict Ferraby, while defence lawyer Mason Goulden said the case relied on unreliable eyewitness testimony that was tainted by confirmation bias.
Sicotte said the case has “drawn a great deal of public interest in the City of Trail and farther afield” and “brought into the spotlight the resentment felt by middle class home and business owners towards the unhoused or homeless population. In doing so, it has ripped into the social fabric of Trail, severing long-term friendships and leading to public confrontations and animosity.”
The judge said he was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Ferraby and two friends approached Wong in the alley and that one of the three punched Wong and knocked him to the ground. He believed it was likely that the friends were fellow firefighters Richard Morris and Mike Parsons, and also thought it was likely that all three, including Ferraby, were involved in the assault.
“The criminal standard of proof, however, requires more than a finding of very likely,” Sicotte said. “It requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I find that I am left with a reasonable doubt as to whether Mr. Ferraby actually participated in the assault on Mr. Wong or was a party to that assault. With that finding, I regrettably have no choice but to find Greg Ferraby not guilty of both counts.”
Ferraby had also been accused of threatening Wong 10 days before he was assaulted. Wong called police following the incident, but Sicotte said because the attending officer did not recall Wong making any specific allegations of threats, he could not convict Ferraby.
Sicotte described Wong as “a gentle soul with no criminal record” who has “suffered significant trauma in his life.” He said in many respects, Wong was not a good witness, whose answers to straightforward questions were “convoluted and often did not actually answer the question asked.” However, he said this did not signify Wong was being dishonest, but rather that he wanted to explain every feeling at length.
Originally, Morris and Parsons were also accused of assaulting Wong. Charges against them were stayed on the eve of the trial last fall, but the Crown didn’t explain why except to say that “further information” led them to believe the charge approval standard was no longer met.
All three men were suspended from their duties at Kootenay Boundary Regional Fire Rescue when the charges were laid. Their work status remains unclear. Regional fire chief Dan Derby said in an email that he had no comment on the verdict.
The quick judgement today came before the conclusion of the defence’s Charter of Rights challenge, which argued Ferraby’s rights were infringed because police failed to obtain or preserve video surveillance.
In what he described as “perhaps gratuitous comments,” Sicotte said the defense would have had a “very difficult time” convincing him that the lack of preservation of video was “somehow the fault of the under-resourced police rather than the apparently active, uncooperative public in Trail.”
Now-retired Cst. Sherri Karn testified that she tried to secure footage from several local businesses, but ran into resistance from three of them. She was only able to get a few clips before other footage was deleted.
On the witness stand again today, she repeated that police discussed seeking warrants for the footage, but before that could happen, she was removed from the file at her request. She said it wasn’t an easy file to work on, since she knew the men involved, and it took a toll on both her and her family.
Sicotte called Karn “a clearly dedicated and experienced police officer,” who in her years working in Trail had “never experienced the lack of co-operation from the business community that she did on this file when investigating an assault causing bodily harm alleged to have been inflicted by three intoxicated firefighters on a peaceful unhoused Asian man.”
Sicotte noted Karn suffered personal attacks when off duty in the community, “disturbing enough for her to request removal from this investigation and ultimately to resign from the force.” He also pointed to testimony from Wong’s sister Diane, who “described severed friendships and significant verbal attacks on her in public.”
No video of the assault is known to exist.
(CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled Sherri Karn’s first name and gave an incorrect surname for Richard Morris.)
