It was dark and Aaron Webster, naked and terrified, was running for his life. He didn't make it.
Just before Mr. Webster reached his car in a deserted parking lot in Vancouver's Stanley Park, a gang of young thugs wielding clubs and baseball bats caught up to him.
The blows came thick and fast, until finally Mr. Webster went down. Then, there were more blows before the gang took off, B.C. Supreme Court heard yesterday. By the time a friend came across Mr. Webster, 41, lying in the parking lot, he was dead.
The chilling details of Mr. Webster's final moments were sketched for the court by prosecutor Greg Weber on the opening day of the trial of Danny Rao, 22, and Ryan Cran, 22, charged with manslaughter in connection with the killing of Mr. Webster, who was gay.
The savage gay-bashing that took place almost three years ago to the day the trial began continues to stain Vancouver's reputation in gay circles around the world, according to Jim Deva, co-owner of the Little Sister's bookstore.
"It's still a nagging wound. To be known as a city where a gay man has been murdered is not a good image for Vancouver," Mr. Deva said outside the courtroom.
"This has been big news in the international gay press. It's a stigma, yet another reason for tourists not to come to our city."
Mr. Weber said much of the evidence against Mr. Rao and Mr. Cran will come from the testimony of two young men already convicted in youth court of manslaughter for their role in the fatal beating, after they confessed to police.
They were each sentenced to three years in custody, the maximum allowed under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
In a preliminary legal skirmish, however, defence lawyer Jim Millar strongly attacked the validity of their anticipated testimony.
He accused the Crown and police of forging "an unholy contract" with the two men, trading their confessions and agreement to testify in return for dropping an attempt to raise them to adult court where they would face stiffer punishment.
As part of the deal, Mr. Millar charged, the two agreed that their evidence would be in accordance with their earlier confessions.
He said he had never "seen anything close to this before" in his long career as a criminal defence lawyer.
"This is intended to prevent the defence from making any headway against these witnesses . . . and getting out what it says is the truth," Mr. Millar told Madam Justice Mary Humphries.
"This is a fabricated case on the basis of an unholy contract. It is strange, to say the least. . . . They have used the coercive power of the state to obtain information from a youth and parlay that into something useful."
Mr. Weber said the previously convicted young men, who cannot be identified because they were juveniles at the time, will testify that a number of them decided to go to Stanley Park to look for "peeping Toms."
It was after midnight Nov. 17, 2001, and they had been drinking at the home of one of the group in South Burnaby.
"They parked at Third Beach [in Stanley Park.]A number of items, baseball bats and the like, were in the trunk," Mr. Weber said. "They armed themselves and went to Second Beach.
"Mr. Webster caught their attention. They noticed he wasn't wearing any clothes. They chased him, striking him with blows."
The trial, proceeding without a jury, is expected to last three weeks.