Victim describes attack in 2023 armed robbery

A Brandon man testified on Monday that he was punched, kicked and stomped on during a two-on-one robbery in 2023 that left him with a broken nose.

“I felt stars after the first punch. I’ve never felt that before,” Graeson Wasicuna testified in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench.

Evan Dickhout previously pleaded not guilty to charges of robbery with a weapon, assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon for the purpose of disturbing public peace.

The Crown called three witnesses to the stand on the first day of Dickhout’s two-day trial, including Wasicuna, who was assaulted and robbed on July 31, 2023.

Wasicuna, who resold designer shoes and clothes at the time, said he met up with an acquaintance at a 7-Eleven store in Brandon. He said the man, the now-deceased co-accused who went by the name of Casper, told him he knew someone who was interested in buying a pair of shoes from him.

“We talk about the buyer … how much I’m gonna get for it, so it intrigues me,” Wasicuna said.

Over the next few hours, he said, Wasicuna and the man walked around the city and stopped at the man’s uncle’s house before ending up outside of an apartment block by École New Era School.

When they got to the apartment block, he said Dickhout was standing on one of the balconies yelling at him. He had met him a few times before and previously sold him a pair of pants. He said Dickhout went by the name Kodak.

Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup asked Wasicuna if Dickhout was someone he would recognize walking down the street and he responded with “100 per cent.”

Wasicuna said he told Dickhout to come down and talk to him instead of yelling and disturbing other people who were sitting on their own balconies.

He said Dickhout came down and almost immediately threw a punch at him and missed.

“I let it go. I tried to walk away, and I got mad and said, ‘You know what? F you’ … And that’s when they came after me,” Wasicuna said, referring to Dickhout and the man who called himself Casper.

Wasicuna said they punched him multiple times, and when he tried to get away, he tripped over his feet and ended up on the ground. They proceeded to punch and kick him, he said. One kick, which he said was from Dickhout, broke his nose.

“I heard the crunch when he kicked … and I looked up because that’s when he stopped — when he seen the blood,” Wasicuna said.

He said Dickhout then continued to kick him while the other man took Wasicuna’s bag with the shoes in it and took the earrings out of Wasicuna’s ears.

Wasicuna said at one point during the robbery, one of the men threw a folding knife at his chest several times, but only the handle hit him.

When the men finally left, Wasicuna knocked on a nearby door and asked someone to call the police, but they refused. After what he estimated to be seven minutes, police showed up and he was taken to the station to provide a statement and have photographs taken of his injuries.

When Lonstrup asked if one of the men involved in the attack was in the courtroom, he gestured toward Dickhout.

Defence lawyer Anthony Dawson questioned Wasicuna on the statement he provided to police, in which Wasicuna said he was getting the men’s names confused.

Wasicuna emphasized that after such a traumatic event, he wasn’t thinking straight.

“It was right after a fight, so, yeah, I got their names mixed up, but they were both still there,” Wasicuna said.

At one point in his statement to police, Wasicuna described Dickhout as being Indigenous and the other man as Caucasian. Dawson asked if Dickhout looked Indigenous to him, and Wasicuna responded with “maybe.”

Prior to Wasicuna taking the stand, the Crown called Laural Cunningham, who witnessed the robbery while sitting on her sister’s balcony.

She testified that she saw two men kick and punch a man before pulling his bag off of his shoulder. Cunningham said she yelled at them to stop, but they didn’t.

When they finally got his bag, she said the two men walked away smiling.

Cunningham called the police during the robbery and they showed up a short time later.

Dawson asked her if she knew if the man was in the courtroom and she said she couldn’t say.

Brandon police Const. Ravyn Duncan, who was the officer that responded to the call, testified that she responded between 12:30 a.m. and 1 a.m.

Wasicuna waved her down, and she brought him into the police cruiser, where he provided a brief statement. She said she drove him to the station and took a recorded statement from him. She said she also photographed his injuries.

She later drove him to the hospital.

Wasicuna’s cross-examination will continue today, and defence will have the opportunity to call more witnesses to the stand.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com