Curtis Sagmoen‘s trial for assault causing bodily harm opened at the Vernon courthouse on Monday morning.
The North Okanagan man has pleaded not guilty to the charge, which stems from an August 2017 incident in which a woman said she was hit with a quad.
On Monday morning, the complainant took the stand and testified she had been invited out to a rural property in the Salmon Arm area to work as an escort.
She testified she arrived in the early afternoon of August 10 and the would-be client asked her to come meet him by a creek via text.
The woman said the client tried to “ask for my services on the side of the creek, which I was not into.”
Instead, she told the court, she asked the client where his house was and he indicated she should follow him on his quad.
However, her vehicle became stuck in sand, she testified.
She said they got the vehicle out of the sand and she ended up getting on his quad.
The woman told the court the pair went further uphill on the quad before the client told her someone had moved the RV he lived in and he wasn’t sure where it had been moved to.
At that point, she said, she asked to be taken back to her car.
However, she said that didn’t happen. Instead, she said, they went a bit further before the client pretended the quad had broken down.
She said she decided to walk back to her vehicle on the dirt road they had been travelling on.
The woman told the court she got a little more than halfway back to her vehicle before she heard the quad start up. She said it sounded like it was going very fast.
“I thought he was just going to be a jerk and like kick up some dust,” she told the court.
“I had moved to the edge to make room for him to go by. Instead of going by me he hit me square from behind…He hit me so hard I flipped over him.”
She recalled seeing the sky and ground before landing face-down on the ground.
She said the client said he didn’t mean to do that.
The woman said she found her keys, which she lost in the collision, and started walking or jogging backwards toward her vehicle because she didn’t want to turn her back on him.
She told the court the would-be client repeatedly said he didn’t mean to do that.
The woman testified that she eventually got back to her vehicle and drove home.
During cross-examination, Sagmoen’s lawyer highlighted that the would-be client had repeatedly said he didn’t mean to hit the complainant with the quad.
Defence counsel also questioned the complainant’s testimony about the extent of her injuries.
Court heard that in the immediate aftermath of the incident, the complainant didn’t go to police or see a doctor.
Defence counsel Lisa Jean Helps also pointed out that the complainant hadn’t seen a medical doctor about a tailbone injury she said suffered in the collision.
Helps also brought up that the complainant used heroin during the time of the alleged offence and pressed her on whether she was feeling the symptoms of withdrawal that day and got angry at her would-be client.
It’s a suggestion the complainant repeatedly denied.
Helps questioned the complainant on possible inconsistencies between her testimony Monday and previous statements to police and the courts.
Sagmoen’s attorney suggested the complainant hadn’t been consistent on things like the nature of the path the pair were on when she was allegedly struck and the speed at which she drove home after the alleged incident.
The complainant’s identity is covered by a publication ban.
The trial, by judge alone, could wrap up as early as Tuesday.
That case involved a different complainant who had also been invited out to the same rural area to work as an escort.