Surrey, B.C. mayor ‘not pinned’ against vehicle, according to new details in public mischief case

More details are emerging in the criminal case against Surrey, B.C., Mayor Doug McCallum, charged with public mischief relating to his claims his foot was run over in a Save-On-Foods parking lot.

Following a successful court challenge by Global News, a judge on Friday removed the seal on a sworn document, called an information to obtain or ITO, in which police detailed the facts of McCallum’s case in order to obtain a search warrant.

McCallum has claimed a driver ran over his foot outside the South Surrey grocery store on Sept. 4, 2021, during a dispute with a group opposing the city’s transition to a municipal police force.

In an interview with Global News two days after the incident, he alleged the driver “clipped my knee and my bottom leg and ran over my foot at the same time and then took off.”

While some redactions were made in the document that was unsealed on Friday, it states in part that “McCallum said in a statement that he was pinned up against his vehicle … The video surveillance shows McCallum was not pinned up against a vehicle.”

Another section states: “McCallum said in his statement that after his foot was run over, he walked over … limping. … Surveillance video shows him walking in the same manner that he was walking prior to the incident.”

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Dan Burnett, a media lawyer with the firm Owen Bird, told Global News the document indicates that “the officers had viewed videotape — some of which they were still seeking, but they had viewed some — and the story on the videotape, the officers believed, did not match up with what Mr. McCallum was saying.”

Evidence in the case includes surveillance video from the Save-On-Foods, where McCallum went to finish his shopping after he claimed he was hit, and from Peace Arch Hospital, where he went after his shopping and got an X-ray.

A running shoe he wore that day is also evidence.

McCallum has pleaded not guilty to public mischief and has declined all comment on the case while it is before the courts.

Burnett said the release of documentation in the high-profile case is in the public interest.

“The principle of court openness has now been fulfilled in the sense that the public should have the entitlement to see what goes on in our courts,” he said.

McCallum is scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 31, about two weeks after the next municipal election.