During a brutal assault in his northeast Calgary basement suite which included being tortured with bleach and a blowtorch, Sean Brooks was convinced he was going to die.
Brooks told the trial of two city men on Tuesday that his assailants discussed putting him in his bathtub to let him bleed out and removing his kidneys.
“I remember hearing, ‘Let’s bleed him out in the bathtub, let’s go for his kidneys,'” Brooks told Crown prosecutor Jack Kelly.
“At this point, I accepted I was going to die. I prayed.”
William McIntosh, who lived in the upstairs of the Falcon Rise N.E. home in which Brooks occupied the basement suite, and Rory Libbrecht, face charges of breaking into the residence for the purpose of confining the complainant and aggravated assault in connection with the March 5, 2021, attack.
A third suspect, Cole McLean, was also scheduled to stand trial this week, but his case has been adjourned to a later date.
Brooks told the Court of King’s Bench hearing that the incident began with a break-in to his basement suite by other parties.
Those individuals ransacked his place before breaking into the upstairs unit to look for McIntosh’s firearms, he said.
But when they discovered McIntosh’s three-year-old son alone in the residence they fled, Brooks testified.
Earlier court heard McIntosh’s estranged wife, Ashley Corbett, had left the boy alone in the home for a brief period while she took her and her ex’s daughter to school.
Brooks said he was in his suite when an angry McIntosh entered with a large man he didn’t know and accused him of breaking into the upstairs portion of the home.
He said he was then repeatedly assaulted by those two individuals, before two other masked men — one he identified as McLean — joined in.
Brooks said he had his hands restrained behind his back with zip ties and was repeatedly kicked and punched.
During the assault he also had bleach poured into his eyes and on his open wounds and had a blowtorch applied to his head, singeing his hair and burning the top of his left ear.
At one point, three of the assailants retreated upstairs while one of the masked intruders stayed to keep watch.
Brooks then told the individual he had cash and drugs stashed and would tell the man where they were if he was released, at which point the man went upstairs to talk to the others.
Because his arms were slippery from the bleach, Brooks was able to free himself from the zip ties and break his bedroom window to escape.
Brooks said he fell into a three-day coma after emergency help arrived and spent an additional five days at Foothills Medical Centre, where he was treated for his injuries including four broken ribs, a collapsed lung and chemical burns.
Twitter: @KMartinCourts
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