Lawyers for five men accused of kidnapping university student Graham McMynn tested his memory of the eight-day ordeal on Monday, suggesting he might have used his girlfriend and news reports to help fill in some blanks.
McMynn, son of a wealthy Vancouver businessman, was grabbed from his car by gun-toting men on April 4, 2006, while he and girlfriend Jacklin Tran were driving to the University of British Columbia.
He was blindfolded and bound for most of his captivity and testified last week that he never saw his kidnappers, though he was able to distinguish three of them by their voices.
He did interact with them, though, facing threats of death, getting meals and hearing details of the plot in conversations with a man he described as the group's leader.
McMynn was rescued from a suburban Surrey basement apartment April 12, 2006. He told prosecutor Richard Cairns he was in a locked room when police raided the house, the last of three hideouts the kidnappers used.
"I was sleeping and I believe what woke me up was a flash-bang (stun grenade),'' he testified as Cairns wrapped up his direct examination in B.C. Supreme Court.
Police were yelling for people to get down, he said, then an officer broke through the door of his room.
"He pointed a gun at me and yelled `get down,''' said McMynn. "I think I was yelling `I'm Graham McMynn,' but I still got told to lie down and put my hands on the wall and stay there.''
McMynn, now 24, said he was not blindfolded at the Surrey house but ordered to pull a cloth over his head before anyone came into the room.
He spent most of his captivity with his head wrapped in duct tape, sometimes with a tuque taped over his head as well. He said he could only see a little through the bottom gap in the blindfold.
Lyndsey Smith, who represents accused Jose Hernandez, questioned McMynn's ability to tell the kidnappers apart by their voices.
McMynn had testified he heard an exchange at one hideout between one of his captors and an angry woman, possibly the man's mother or the house's landlady.
In a statement to police about a week after his rescue, he said the woman spoke Vietnamese but told police the day of his rescue that he wasn't sure.
"And I'm still not sure,'' he told Chandra Corriveau, lawyer for suspect Sam Vu.
The lawyer for accused Joshua Ponicappo, Dimitri Kontou, asked McMynn about an incident the day before the kidnapping, when McMynn avoided a suspicious car that raced up behind he and Tran.
McMynn agreed he didn't consider the incident unusual until he talked to Tran after his rescue.
He didn't mention it in two police statements made the day he was freed, nor a follow-up e-mail to police a day later. It first came up when prosecutors interviewed him more than a year after the kidnapping.
"I didn't associate the two at all when I talked to police,'' he said. "She (Tran) reminded me that that had happened, that it was the same people.''
McMynn testified earlier that the two men who approached the car were both armed with handguns. Yet he told police he only saw one gun in the hands of a white man with a red hat who approached the driver's side of his Volkswagen Golf.
Kontou suggested Tran told him about the second gun.
In interviews with McMynn, police investigators at one point said they were worried his evidence would be tainted by his discussions with Tran, Kontou suggested.
Talking with police, McMynn also referred to news articles and television reports about the kidnapping. Kontou suggested some of the information in those stories had crept into his evidence.
But McMynn said the references in some cases were to refute details in news reports, such as him being given sushi to eat.
McMynn admitted his mind was unsettled in the initial stages of the kidnapping and he may not have noted details about his abductors and surroundings.
But he was firm when Kontou suggested he may have been confused about the race of the gun-toting man who came up to his car door.
"The person that came to my side was white,'' he said.
However, McMynn could not say that was the same person referred to as "white boy'' within the kidnap group, a suspect scolded for breaking some unidentified item in one of the hideouts.
Karen Bastow, the lawyer for Anh The Nguyen, questioned McMynn's memory of the so-called leader.
McMynn agreed he didn't know for sure if the man was actually in charge but said he seemed to know what was going on.
She challenged McMynn's recollection of conversations with the leader while confined to a closet in the first days of the kidnapping, or that the man was even at the first hideout.
Perhaps the stress of the abduction, being tied up and blindfolded, losing track of time, clouded his memory?
"I'm going to suggest the event was somewhat disorienting,'' said Bastow.
McMynn agreed but remained adamant the leader talked to him and put a gun to his head as a warning to be compliant.
McMynn grew impatient during three hours of cross-examination by defence lawyers.
At one point Bastow asked him about a detail from his interview with police last July, noting that session was fairly recent.
"You know as well as I do how long ago that was,'' he snapped.
