A former member of the Devil’s Army motorcycle club says he heard a sharp yell and the words “Don’t [expletive] touch him” when he reached toward someone lying behind a couch on the floor of a clubhouse seven years ago.
“I leaned up and turned my head and as soon as I turned my head I could smell gunpowder and I could see Rick standing at the door of the bathroom with a towel in his hand,” the former member, identified only as X, testified Thursday at Richard Alexander’s trial for the first-degree murder of Dillon Brown.
Brown, a 30-year-old mixed martial artist, was shot in the back of the head, then placed in the trunk of his car, which was abandoned on the side of the road 75 kilometres north of Campbell River. Alexander, the former president of the Devil’s Army motorcycle club, has pleaded not guilty to the crime.
X, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, testified at times through tears as he described the events of the afternoon of March 11, 2016.
Around 1:30 p.m., X testified, he was standing behind the bar chatting with Alexander, who had just come back from lunch.
“He asked me if I had any plans. I said I did not. He asked me if I’d give him a hand bringing somebody to their car.”
Alexander didn’t mention the person’s name and X thought Alexander meant someone was coming to the clubhouse to get drugs, he testified.
“Did he say anything about anyone else coming?” asked prosecutor Kimberly Henders Miller.
“Yes… If he doesn’t come alone, it’s off,” X replied.
Alexander was wearing a long Gore-Tex jacket, expensive jeans and black running shoes, he recalled. He also had a pair of black leather motorcycle gloves. He had his phone with him and had received a text, said X.
Alexander had told him to close the gate when the person arrived. So the two of them were waiting, looking at the monitor when a little grey car came up the driveway to the back of the clubhouse, he recalled.
The person got out of the car and walked toward X and Alexander.
“As he got closer to me, Rick said … ‘I don’t believe you’ve ever met [X] before.’ I remember the guy switched his papers and I shook his hand. And he and Rick went down into the basement of the clubhouse,” X testified.
X walked to the gate and closed it, then walked back to the clubhouse and went inside.
“I didn’t see anything or hear anything,” said X.
He said he walked toward a table where the remote was kept and turned the TV on for a couple of seconds. Then he went to the beer cooler to grab something to drink. But on his way, X caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, just behind the couch.
“When I turned my head, I realized it was a person,” he said, crying and lowering his head.
Alexander put the towel on the ground and asked X if he had any gloves. X found a pair in the saddlebag of a motorcycle outside the clubhouse.
“I put them on and I walked back into the clubhouse and … Rick came out of the bathroom with a garbage bag …. and he placed it over Dillon’s head,” X said, struggling to get the words out. “Sometime after that he told me to remind him not to forget Dillon’s phone.”
Alexander backed Brown’s car up to the back door of the clubhouse.
“We went back in the house and there was a short discussion of moving the remains,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I remember just before we moved the individual, Rick made a comment. ‘Don’t worry about the cameras, Dean’s turned them off. The next door neighbours’ cameras are also turned off.’
“I picked up the feet of the individual and Rick picked up his other half and supported it and we started to leave the clubhouse. At some point, we had to readjust, so we did that. … We placed him into his car, into the trunk.”
Alexander drove off. X followed for a while but kept going straight after Alexander turned off.
X’s testimony will continue today.
