2012-04-11
A former TTC employee admits he did some stupid, goofy things during the G20 protests, including jumping up and down on an abandoned police cruiser on Queen St. W.
He also joined others trying to flip the car over, retreating when told to stop, playing with police radios and removing Toronto Police Service papers scattered inside the vehicle.
But Ashan Ravindhraraj, 27, says he did not set the fire that engulfed the scout car parked in the middle of Queen, just east of Spadina Ave., on June 26, 2010, one of the more indelible images of that notorious weekend.
At the outset of his trial last week, the first G20 case to be heard in front of a Toronto jury, Ravindhraraj pleaded guilty to two counts of mischief to property but pleaded not guilty to arson.
The Crown and defence have submitted dozens of photos taken that afternoon on Queen to support two very different conclusions.
Crown Attorney Catherine Rhinelander introduced a series of images of Ravindhraraj, including a photo showing his hand holding a piece of paper and reaching into the cruiser through the passenger-side window. Another image, taken moments later, appears to show smoke coming from the passenger seat.
“Did you light anything on fire?” defence lawyer Robert Geurts asked his client Tuesday.
“No, no, the paper was not on fire when I threw it in the car. . . . When I saw the photo I was shocked.”
Ravindhraraj said he was reaching inside the window with a piece of paper he had removed earlier to compare it with others, “but realized it would be pointless because there’s too many papers inside the car.”
“Would you put the paper in (the car) if you knew there was a flame in the car?” Geurts asked.
“No, definitely not. That’s why I am here. If I had done this I would have pleaded guilty.” He told jurors he was waited two years, living under house arrest, “so I could defend myself.”
A few weeks after his images were published on the Internet and in the Star, Ravindhraraj was fired from his job as a data management technician with the city’s transit commission.
He headed downtown during the G20 after a friend invited him to take pictures, he told the jury, adding he wasn’t politically motivated.
One of those photos shows Ravindhraraj standing on the hood of a cruiser with his foot hovering above the spiderweb-split windshield. During cross-examination, Rhinelander asked if he was about to kick it.
“That’s what it looks like, yes,” he said. But he insisted he was only pressing his foot to the shattered glass.
“I didn’t want to kick the windshield in. . . . I posed for a photo looking like I was kicking the windshield in.” He planned to post the photos on Facebook, “I guess to elicit comments.”
The trial continues Wednesday.