A Halifax Regional Police officer testified that an alleged sex assault victim was "very distraught" and looked like she’d been crying for hours when he interviewed her.
Const. Jasmin Razic testified Wednesday that the Halifax university student, who cannot be identified, also was intoxicated after a night of partying but that she was able to recount the basics of the alleged incident on Jan. 6, 2019.
Razic was testifying in Halifax provincial court on the second day of the sex assault trial of former taxi driver Tesfom Kidane Mengis, 37, of Halifax. The young woman, who was his passenger, told court Tuesday that Mengis grabbed the back of her head and forcibly kissed her in the front seat of his cab after they’d arrived in front of her apartment. She said he also “ripped up” her skirt until it was halfway up her back.
She testified she pulled herself away from the cab driver and ran into her apartment.
Razic said he and his partner went to her apartment just after 6 a.m. after her roommate called police. The alleged victim was sitting on a couch under a blanket with her roommate, who had her arm around her.
Razic told Crown attorney Rick Woodburn that the alleged victim and her roommate were also interviewed later in the day at the Halifax police station.
“In the second interview, she was calm and collected and able to give more detail,” said Razic, who has been a police officer for eight years and is trained in dealing with trauma victims.
The woman provided enough information to give reasonable grounds to start tracking down the accused cab driver and eventually came up with Mengis as the suspect. (Mengis lost his taxi licence in the wake of being charged).
They arrested him at his Halifax apartment at about 3:45 p.m. Razic said the man’s wife and children were in the apartment so the officers waited to handcuff him and read him his charter rights until after they took him to their police cruiser in the apartment building parking lot.
Mengis was co-operative and appeared to understand everything the officers told him, Razic told Woodburn, and he responded to them in understandable English.
The issue of Mengis’s comprehension of English has been an issue in court. He asked for and received the services of a translator who has been rendering the proceedings into his native Tigrinya.
Woodburn asked Razic if there appeared to be any language barrier of any sort in communicating with Mengis.
“No there did not, and I even explained that he would come to the station with us and (it) would be several hours. … His response was that he understood,” said Razic, who later added he’s familiar with dealing with people whose native language isn’t English because he’s one himself. He and his family came to Canada from Bosnia when he was a boy.
Although the details have not been made explicit in court, his legal aid lawyer Godfred Chongatera filed a charter brief Tuesday that appears to relate to Mengis not understanding his rights after his arrest, including during a police interview.
A videotape of that interrogation is expected to be shown at his trial Wednesday and Razic will continue his testimony in front of Judge Gregory Lenehan.
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