Strip-club gunman angry bouncer tells trial

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Written by: 195 on Mar 12, 2010

In dramatic testimony that drew a combative response from the defence, a former strip-club bouncer told a murder trial yesterday of the moment two years ago in which an errant bullet allegedly intended for himself instead killed an innocent passerby.

"I realized there was a body, a man lying with his face down, with a package on the ground," Shane Knox told the jury weighing the fate of Edward Paredes, 24 and Awet Zekarias, 25, both charged with second-degree murder.

"I couldn't believe what I was looking at."

The body was that of John O'Keefe, 42, slain by a single bullet to the head in the early hours of Jan. 12, 2008, as he walked past the Brass Rail strip club on Yonge Street, on his way home from an evening with friends.

A burly, heavily tattooed figure with a shaved head and goatee beard, Mr. Knox told the trial he had worked in the strip-club business for 12 years, had been involved in "a fair number" of altercations and had been shot at six times, though never wounded.

His testimony under questioning from prosecutor Hank Goody was lucid and articulate, and he firmly rejected the contention of defence counsel Howard Goldkind and Robert Tomovski that his actions that night might have contributed to Mr. O'Keefe's death.

Minutes before the shooting, he and a colleague had ejected the two accused men for rowdiness.

Armed with a baton because there was talk inside the club one of the departing pair had a gun, Mr. Knox then ventured outside to return a cellphone one of them had left behind, and advise them to go home.

As he called out to the two men, he said, an "angry" Mr. Paredes pulled a handgun from his waist, and slid a bullet into the firing chamber.

As that happened, he testified, Mr. Zekarias started to yell, "Give me the heat [the gun], if you don't want to do it, I'll do it."

What followed, Mr. Knox said was "madness ... I was screaming 'Gun, gun, get the fuck out of the way' ... Everybody scattered."

That's when he heard the fatal shot, which he likened to the crack of a bullwhip, and glimpsed Mr. O'Keefe's body on the sidewalk.

Mr. Knox then described trying to hustle onlookers inside the bar and close the doors because "he [Mr. Paredes] had missed what seemed to be his target and I thought he might come back."

In a courtroom filled with their relatives, the two neatly dressed accused looked on nonchalantly.

They and four friends had arrived at the Brass Rail less than an hour before the 1:17 a.m. shooting to celebrate Mr. Zekarias's 23rd birthday.

The core of the prosecution case being heard before Madam Justice Mary Lou Benotto of Superior Court and a nine-man, three-woman jury is that Mr. Paredes was the shooter, Mr. Zekarias "the shouter" who egged on his friend, and Mr. O'Keefe the accidental victim.

Mr. Paredes has acknowledged pulling the trigger of his legally registered handgun after he and Mr. Zekarias were thrown out of the club but has insisted he did not mean to kill anyone.

He tried to plead guilty to manslaughter, which broadly means an accidental homicide, but the prosecution rejected his offer, maintaining the shooting was intentionally directed at the Brass Rail staff and at Mr. Knox in particular.

Mr. Goldkind, acting for Mr. Zekarias, suggested that by going back outside the club with the cellphone and the baton, concealed in a sleeve, Mr. Knox was looking for trouble,

"I'm suggesting you were teasing these two fellows," he said.

Mr. Knox denied the accusation, telling the trial his chief concern was the "gun talk" among club staff about the two ejected patrons and his anxiety that they not come back inside, especially if one of them was armed.

The baton in his sleeve, he said, was insurance in case the gun threat proved real.

But he also conceded to Mr. Tomovski that a fellow staff member had advised him to disregard the cellphone left behind by the two accused men, and let them go their way.

The trial continues.

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