Smich on edge after killing, friend testifies
H A MILT ON • Mark Smich was on edge in the weeks before his arrest for the highprofile murder of Tim Bosma — “nervous, jumpy, anxious, looking over his shoulder,” his best friend testified Tuesday. He also tried to sell a gun and drugs to raise fast money.
Smich was unravelling, Brendan Daly said at the first- degree murder trial of Smich and Dellen Millard.
If someone came to the door, Smich jumped. He deleted his Facebook account and ditched his two cellphones. If he needed to make a call, he used someone else’s phone, sometimes Daly’s.
Whenever Smich used Daly’s phone, he would speak in private. When he returned it, the call history and text messages had been deleted, Daly said.
The 23-year-old described Smich as his best friend at the time. They lived a 45- second walk apart in Oakville, Ont., and saw each other almost every day, usually to smoke marijuana. Smich was Daly’s pot source.
Smich sometimes went by the nickname “Say 10,” an ob- vious play on Satan, but Daly didn’t call him that, he said.
Bosma vanished on May 6, 2013, after joining two strangers on a test drive of the pickup truck he was selling online. Prosecutors say he was shot in the truck and his body burned in an incinerator. Smich, 28, of Oakville, and Millard, 30, of Toronto, have pleaded not guilty.
Daly said he saw an immediate change in Smich the morning after Bosma’s disappearance.
He was waiting outside Smich’s house to collect some marijuana. Millard’s truck zoomed up and Smich climbed out, Daly said, but he blew right past him, steaming inside without saying hello or acknowledging he was there.
Smich’s girlfriend, Marlena Meneses, then came out of the house.
“He sent Marlena out with my weed and she said, ‘ You guys need to get lost.’ ”
Later, Daly asked Smich what was up.
“I f-- ked up, man. I f-- ked up,” Smich said, according to the witness, adding, “These niggas are coming to get me …. These guys don’t f-- k around, they’re gonna come get me.”
Smich didn’t say who was coming for him, or whether it was the police he feared. He did seem to be hiding. “He was trying to lay low then, to avoid being seen by anybody,” said Daly.
Smich was also trying to get Daly to move a tool box.
“What was in the tool box?” asked Assistant Crown attorney Brett Moodie. “A gun,” said Daly. “Who told you that?” “He did,” he said, motioning toward Smich.
Smich had played him a video on a tablet, perhaps an iPad, about “zombie bullets” and said he had some of this type of ammunition, but it didn’t fit the gun he had. Smich complained Millard got the gun he wanted and he ended up with another gun, Daly said.
That other gun — Smich’s gun — was stashed in a yellow and black tool box, which was then hidden.
“The tool box was in the bottom of a washer or dryer in his mom’s garage,” Daly said. Smich then moved out of the house: he said he felt safer “not being in the same place as the tool box.”
Smich asked Daly to contact his friend, a man nicknamed “Bleach,” to raise some money.
“He asked me to get ahold of my friend and get my friend to come and buy it. Buy the gun or the weed. One or the other — he said he needed money for a lawyer.”
Bleach came, but only had about $100, Daly said. Smich was looking for $1,000, so no sale took place.
(Court earlier heard police found the tool box in Smich’s bedroom; it was empty but tested positive for gunshot residue.)
After Millard was arrested on May 10, 2013, Daly asked Smich if he was also involved.
“His mood changed very quickly,” Daly said. “He got mad, said he wasn’t there, he wasn’t involved.”
Daly didn’t push it, because Smich looked intimidatingly at him.
If Smich felt paranoid, he was right to.
Police had him under surveillance at the time. The jury was shown photos they covertly took of Smich. At least two feature him with Daly.
Smich was arrested on May 22, 2013.
That day, police came to Daly’s house. He didn’t tell them about the tool box or Smich’s gun, court heard.
“I didn’t want to be called a snitch,” he testified
But after talking to a lawyer, he contacted investigators and, nine days later, gave a fuller account.
Daly said he has grown up a lot since that time and cleaned up. He is enrolled in school.
Outside court, however, he was belligerent. Donning sunglasses and pulling a hoodie over his head, he pushed away a camera before his father stepped in between the reporter and his son.