A B.C. Provincial Court judge found former Surrey mayor Doug McCallum not guilty of public mischief Monday.
Doug McCallum became visibly emotional as Judge Reginald Harris delivered his verdict in the case, which hinged on whether the former mayor had intentionally misled police to trigger an investigation of a political opponent.
McCallum alleged Debi Johnstone, a member of the group Keep the RCMP in Surrey, had run over his foot outside the Southpoint Save-On-Foods on Sept. 4, 2021.
“Legally speaking, the way that a person reacts to an incident is not usually given much weight. This is because people react differently to all sorts of situations. You have to remember – as the judge found in this case, this was already a very heated and stressful encounter between the two of them.”
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“This is something that happens in court a lot. Judges hear conflicting accounts from witnesses all the time – where two people can honestly believe that a completely different version of events happened.”