On the morning a kidnapping and assault trial was supposed to start at the Chilliwack Law Courts, one of three co-accused has bowed out. Evan Perry Arnold, 41, has entered an 11th-hour guilty plea, leaving Makayla Nicole Hebert, 26, and Dyllon Bradley Hoffman, 30, to stand trial.
Perry faced 10 charges from an incident that took place April 19, 2021, including aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, kidnapping without the use of a firearm and robbery. Arnold, Hebert and Hoffman were accused of assaulting a man and woman inside a double-wide trailer on Watson Road before putting them in the trunk of a car, driving to a remote location along Chilliwack Lake Road and assaulting them again.
Crown prosecutor John Lester told the court he would normally read a statement of facts into the record along with a guilty plea, and he had a five-page document providing far more detail on what Arnold admitted to doing. But with the trial moving ahead for the other two, B.C. Provincial Judge Kristen Mundstock didn’t want to hear anything that might colour her perceptions of the evidence and testimony to come.
Lester and defence lawyer Derwin Petri thought it might be possible to have B.C. Provincial Judge Peter Whyte hear the guilty plea, but he didn’t want to do that without reading/hearing the statement of facts. Once he did that he would be ‘seized,’ meaning no other judge could take over.
The end result is that the full details of Arnold’s crimes will have to come out at the trial for Hoffman and Hebert, and that has been adjourned to Friday (March 24) because Hebert’s lawyer was too sick to be there Monday.
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