A man who saw his friend stabbed outside Blarney Stone Pub in 2015 angrily defended his account under cross-examination Friday.
Daniel Travis Cooper became riled as defence lawyer Chris Archer pointed out inconsistencies in statements he had given police and testimony at preliminary hearings about what happened on the Nov. 18, 2015, night his friend was beaten and fatally stabbed.
Under close questioning, Cooper insisted that he saw his friend, Alan Beach, stabbed in the left leg by Daniel Boyd Sawyer in a fight outside the pub.
Cooper testified earlier this week that Bill Georgopoulos started the fight, supposedly triggered by a drug debt owed by the victim’s brother, after confronting Beach outside the Village Mall pub shortly before 9 p.m.
Later, others including Sawyer, who is on trial for second-degree murder in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench, joined in the attack on Beach.
That’s when Sawyer stabbed Beach in the left leg, Cooper testified.
But none of Beach’s wounds were on the left side of his body, Archer pointed out.
“If Mr. Sawyer was on the left side, he didn’t kill your friend,” said Archer. “Mr. Georgopoulos killed your friend, not Mr. Sawyer.”
“OK, bud,” said Cooper.
Archer asked if he agreed then.
“No, I don’t agree with you.”
Archer repeatedly pushed an increasingly irate Cooper to describe only what he saw, not what others told him later.
Archer said they were in court on a “truth-seeking exercise.”
“You’re trying to make me out to be a liar, and I’m not,” said Cooper.
Archer also walked Cooper through his first statement to police about 20 minutes after the stabbing. In that statement, he only identified one person as stabbing Beach, a man who was later named as Georgopoulos.
The first time Cooper mentioned seeing a knife in Sawyer’s hands was during his preliminary hearing long after the events, pointed out Archer.