NANAIMO — Kevin Addison has admitted he shot all four men at a Nanaimo mill on April 30, 2014, but under cross-examination told a Nanaimo courtroom he didn’t mean to and that he doesn’t know what happened to him that day.
Friday was the first day that the jury saw emotion from Addison, who killed two men and injured two more. He wiped tears as a video recording of an RCMP interview with his late mother was played.
Paige Lunn hasn’t moved past the killing of her grandfather, Michael Lunn. “He was my grampa but he was more like my dad. He was a fantastic father figure for me.” So she attended Nanaimo court Friday to hear how her grandfather’s last moments alive unfolded through the eyes of the man who shot him.
“I wanted the facts, I wanted to know what happened to him. I wanted to know what his last moments were like.”
Addison told court he shot all four men that day after being laid off from the mill years earlier and becoming convinced, though wrongly, that the mill manager was to blame for him not being hired back.
“I don’t know what happened to me that day, I’ll never understand what happened to me that day,” Addison testified.
Didn’t you feel anything? the Crown asked. “I don’t remember,” he replied. “I didn’t even know Mike was gonna be there. He just drove up.” He described how he shot Michael Lunn. “I thought to myself, you don’t need that f--ing arm anymore,” he said. He then shot Lunn. “I remember him falling and I was walking away.”
“It’s hard hearing that you look at somebody and then you shot him,” said Marcie Lunn, Michael Lunn’s daughter. “That was the hard part, and then you watch my father fall to the ground.”
Court watched an RCMP interview with the shooter’s mother, Lorraine Addison, recorded the night of the shooting. She died six months ago and her evidence of his mental state at the time was testimony the court decided the jury trial should hear.
She described a depressed son, who in the wake of his marriage breaking up and then being laid off from the mill within a year, was broke and isolating himself.
“He was just falling apart,” Lorraine Addison said.
When left alone in the interrogation room, she recorded a private message for her son. “I’m sorry it had to come to this for you,” she’s heard saying. “We all stand behind you.” Those words led Addison to wipe his eyes and his family was visibly emotional as well.
Kevin Addison has pleaded not guilty to all charges, based on his mental state at the time of the shooting. The trial continues next week.
