# Dramatic Testimony About Deadly Raid



## Inspector (Nov 13, 2006)

MONTREAL - Const. Stephane Forbes knew something had gone terribly wrong during a police raid when he suddenly lost control of his right arm.
Testifying Monday at Basil Parasiris' first-degree murder trial, the Laval police officer recalled the early-morning chaos that left fellow police officer Daniel Tessier dead.
In about 30 seconds, 18 shots had been fired and two police officers and Parasiris' wife had been shot.







*Laval police officer Nathalie Allard arrives to testify in the Basil Parasiris police murder trial Monday in Laval, Que.*

After battering down the front door of Parasiris's home and yelling "police," five officers charged up the stairs to the second floor, Forbes testified.
The police officer said he first checked the bedroom door that faced the top of the stairway. It was the room where Parasiris' seven-year-old daughter, Stephanie, was sleeping.
"I was opening the door. I heard shots fired and I felt a bullet go through my arm," Forbes said.
He said he felt his right arm go limp and realized immediately the shots had been fired from a large calibre firearm.
"Much bigger than ours," he said.
Down the hall, the first officer to go up the stairs, Constable Serge Lauzon, made a mistake that probably saved his life.
Lauzon said his orders were to secure the master bedroom, but when he reached the top of the stairs he turned right instead of left and headed for the wrong bedroom.
That's when Lauzon heard the first shots.
"I thought the shots came from behind the door. Because the door had opened and closed. I had the impression I was under fire," Lauzon said. He then started firing at the door. It turned out the door was blocked by a computer desk in the boy's room.
While backing up after firing into the door, Lauzon bumped into Det.-Sgt. Nathalie Allard.
Allard testified that when Lauzon bumped into her she was knocked off her feet while firing toward the master bedroom.
Allard said she heard the first shots when she reached the top of the stairs and that she could see flashes from a gun pointed out of the doorway of the master bedroom.
"I figured it was a threat, that someone was trying to kill us," she said.
Allard said that after hiding inside a bathroom she noticed blood on her hands and assumed she had been shot.
Lauzon checked her out, determined she wasn't injured and asked her to call 911.
That's when Stephanie Parasiris walked out of her bedroom.
Lauzon said he motioned her into the bathroom and told her to stay with Allard. He then walked out into the hallway, dragged Tessier's body into the girl's bedroom and ordered Parasiris to give himself up.
The 911 call, which was played for the jury yesterday, clearly shows emotions were running high.
"You will show me your hands from behind the door. This is the police here. You have shot a police officer you . . . " Lauzon is overheard yelling in the background while Allard told the 911 operator that an officer had been shot.
Parasiris's wife, Panagiota Gounis, who was wounded during the raid, can be heard in the background screaming: "Oh my God!"
Lauzon said he grabbed Parasiris, took him downstairs and was about to hand him over to another officer. But before turning him over, Lauzon admitted, he grabbed Parasiris by the neck, pulled his fist back, threatened to punch him and said: "Mon ostie sale."
Defence lawyer Jacques Larochelle seized on this point and asked Lauzon if he understood anything Parasiris, who speaks English, said to him during their exchange upstairs.
While demanding Parasiris show him his hands, Lauzon, who acknowledged he is not fully bilingual, got frustrated and demanded to be spoken to in French.
Larochelle also asked if Lauzon called Parasiris "une ostie bloke" while trying to get him to surrender. Lauzon replied that he wasn't sure.
Everything happened in a matter of seconds, Forbes said of the time between the moment he struck the front door with his battering ram to when the gunfire stopped.
The jury was told earlier in the trial that Parasiris fired off four shots from a Ruger .357 Magnum while the Laval police officers fired 14 times.
Parasiris is also charged with Forbes's attempted murder.


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