By Ashley Legassic

Search warrant fills in details of alleged Lillooet attack

Mar 29, 2019 | 3:11 PM

KAMLOOPS — A Lillooet man is facing a charge of aggravated assault after an alleged attack at his home in October 2018.

Allistair Neil McKay, born in 1990, was originally charged with attempted murder, but that charge has since been downgraded.

According to an unsealed search warrant seeking to obtain McKay’s DNA, a witness called Lillooet RCMP around 7:40 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2018, to report that he could hear two or three males screaming and swearing at each other near the Lillooet Recreation Centre.

Shortly after hearing this, the witness left his home and saw the men were outside the Esso gas station on Seventh Avenue and Main Street. 

Lillooet RCMP Const. Jeffrey Curtiss attended the gas station just before 8:00 p.m. and spoke with the attendant, who said a man in his 20s had just been in there with a significant cut to his face. He was bleeding a bit and the attendant heard the man — later identified as Marvin Frank — say that Allistair McKay had cut him.

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A woman then picked Frank up and took him to the hospital.

A different officer attended the Lillooet Hospital and saw Frank was receiving treatment for a large laceration to the left side of his cheek, following the jawline. Kenneth Michell was with Frank and had been there for the alleged attack.

Frank gave a statement to the officer, according to the search warrant, in which he repeatedly said McKay had attacked him.

“Frank said that McKay had invited Frank and Michell over to his house,” the warrant reads. “Frank stated: ‘I just got stabbed for no reason’, ‘He invited us, he invited us, he, uh, Allistair.’ Frank continued to repeat ‘I just got stabbed’ and ‘Allistair.’”

Frank said as soon as the pair entered the home, McKay pulled out a knife and stab him.

“He tried to kill me,” Frank told the officer in his statement.

He alleged that once he was on the ground, McKay continued to kick him in the head, and Frank and Michell at some point were able to escape from McKay’s home.

Frank and Michell both told the officer they were in the home for less than five minutes before McKay pulled the knife out. 

Frank was treated in hospital for a severed artery, a severed nerve and muscle and tissue damage.

According to the search warrant, police believed McKay could have a firearm on him, and due to his “extensive history” of assault and a known firearms prohibition, they entered the home soon after they arrived. Officers were also concerned about any other people who could have been inside and in harm’s way.

Instead, when they got in they found McKay fully dressed, sleeping in his bed. When Curtiss tried to read McKay his rights, McKay presented “extremely erratic behaviour”. Once he was told he was being arrested for the attempted murder of Frank, McKay said he didn’t know the last time he saw him.

However, DNA swabs from the home later identified both Frank’s blood and DNA from McKay on the knife, the warrant says.

Last month, McKay was ordered to stand trial on the charge, and his next appearance in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops is set for the end of July.