There’s no dispute that Corner Brook Esso was robbed on July 2, 2015 or that Ashley Park is the man who committed the crime.
There’s also no dispute Dillon Bourgeois was there and entered the Main Street gas station just before Park.
What lawyer Karen Rehner says is disputed is whether or not Bourgeois’s actions make him a party to the offence.
Rehner, who is representing Bourgeois on a charge of robbing the gas station, made those comments during her submissions at the end of his trial in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Corner Brook on Friday.
It’s her assertion that they don’t make him a party to the crime. To be a party to the crime she said he would have had to have the knowledge and intent to assist Park.
It’s the Crown’s theory that Bourgeois was a party to the offence.
Crown attorney Lori St. Croix said the pair had expected to find the door to the gas station locked that night and one of them would have to have their face uncovered in order to gain entry. That person would be Bourgeois.
But the door was not locked and surveillance video from the store shows Bourgeois entering the building at around 2:50 a.m. with Park right behind him.
Bourgeois moves to the drink cooler and Park, with his face covered, goes to the counter and demands money from the clerk while pointing a knife at her.
Bourgeois is then seen leaving the store and Park shortly after with the $160 the clerk handed to him.
Video surveillance from Regent Square and Broadway from just after 3 a.m. shows two people walking across the square and then running across Broadway. St. Croix said one of them is wearing shorts that have the same light patch on them as the ones Bourgeois is wearing in the Esso video.
St. Croix asked Justice George Murphy find that Bourgeois is guilty of the robbery as a party to the crime.
While Rehner asked that he be found not guilty, she noted that the court has the ability to find a party guilty to a lesser offence than the one committed.
She said if the court finds Bourgeois undertook actions that assisted Park in the robbery, the actions were done with the purpose of assisting him, but not with the purpose of assisting in the commission of the robbery.
Murphy will deliver his decision in the matter Feb. 14
