The woman who Doug McCallum claims ran over his foot in a Save-On-Foods parking lot has testified at the outgoing Surrey mayor’s trial that she engaged in a “heated” debate with him on the day of the alleged incident.
McCallum has pleaded not guilty to public mischief over claims he made that Debi Johnstone hit him with her car when she was in front of the grocery store in South Surrey on Sept. 4, 2021.
Johnstone, a member of the group Keep the RCMP in Surrey, told the court she’d driven to the store to collect signatures for a campaign to force a referendum on the city’s transition to a municipal police force, when she stopped at a stop sign and saw McCallum in a crosswalk.
The 66-year-old testified she yelled, “Resign, McCallum!” from her Ford Mustang when she recognized him, at which point he came over and stood on a small embankment next to her passenger-side door and the two engaged in an expletive-laden back-and-forth.
McCallum told her she wasn’t allowed to be there and he would send bylaw officers to remove her, Johnstone alleged.
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“I called him a scaly-faced m—–f—–,” she said.
“He told me that I’m a big mouth, a loud mouth, something to the effect of, ‘I am no good for Surrey,’ I need to learn to be quiet, I wasn’t allowed to be there and that my group had multiple lawsuits, he was filing multiple lawsuits against us.
“I told him that I was getting constantly cut off at council meetings … and I told him I was going to be the b—- that brought him down.”
She said as she drove away, she yelled, “You’re evil!” at McCallum, then drove by the petition volunteers and told them McCallum tried to tell her they had to leave.
During cross examination, defence lawyer Richard Peck pressed Johnstone on previous protest activity, which had involved shouting expletives at Surrey Police Service officers outside the Surrey RCMP detachment, showing up outside McCallum’s house on one occasion, and being banned from council meetings for what he suggested was “extremely disruptive” behaviour.
He suggested Johnstone had sought a confrontation with the mayor on the day of the incident.
“Was it your intention on this or other occasions to harass Mr. McCallum? … To intimidate him?” Peck asked.
“I didn’t want to be small any more. I wanted to let him know I wasn’t going to go in the corner,” Johnstone responded.
Peck also pressed her on her recollection of what happened. During the exchange, she acknowledged she had been mistaken in earlier testimony about where exactly her car was in the parking lot.
In his opening arguments, special prosecutor Richard Fowler told the court earlier in the day that the mayor had phoned 911 to report “Johnstone’s car just about hit him, that she ran over his leg and foot, and as she drove off, it was very dangerous.”
McCallum later attended Peace Arch Hospital in White Rock, and then the Surrey RCMP detachment where he gave a recorded statement to police, Fowler said.
“He told the police, amongst other things, that Ms. Johnstone pulled up in her car and just about pinned him to the back of his car. As she pulled away, she actually floored it and purposely turned towards him and ran over his foot,” Fowler told the court.
“Furthermore, he told the police, ‘I really, on this one, wanna go after her.’”
Fowler said the court would also hear testimony from the RCMP officer who took McCallum’s statement and see CCTV video from the Save-On-Foods, the Surrey RCMP detachment and Peace Arch Hospital.
“The question ultimately will be whether Mr. McCallum intended to mislead the police by making false statements to the police with the intention to cause Ms. Johnstone to be suspected having committed an offence she had not committed,” he said.
In the Criminal Code of Canada, the offence of public mischief covers a variety of actions amounting to making a false report to police.
McCallum has repeatedly refused to comment on the allegation.
The trial comes two weeks after Brenda Locke narrowly defeated McCallum in the city’s municipal election.
Taxpayers continue to pay his legal bills, but Locke told Global he should cover them himself since the incident happened on his personal time.
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