28 Seconds

by Michael Bryant

  The store also has two security cameras, one facing southeast on Bloor, the other facing to the west. Some of what happened that night was captured by those cameras. Some of the video is fairly clear. Some isn’t.

  What it did show, what a later investigation would show, and what I recall, is this:

  Before the 28 seconds began, I had been unsettled by Sheppard’s antics and had lost sight of him. I was anxiously trying to spot him in the passenger-side rearview mirror, assuming that if he showed it would be near to the curb. Susan took the direction of my glance for attention and chatted away about work.

  As Sheppard passed on my left and cut in front of us, the traffic light had just turned green and I was starting to move the Saab forward. As he passed, he slowed, coming very close to my side door. I sensed him swipe his hand at me. I ducked instinctively to my right, hitting the brakes and turning the wheels to the right. It was then I stalled the car, presumably taking my foot off the gas and clutch while putting on the brakes. When I looked up, he was straddling the bike, facing us, taunting me. “Now what’re ya gonna do?”

  The 28 seconds began.

  His front wheel was within a couple feet of the Saab’s front bumper. I knew he was too close for me to drive around him. In a millisecond, my eyes darted up to my rearview mirror, then back to this man. I saw that there were cars behind me, so I couldn’t back up. I couldn’t move forward. Trapped. He was big, drunk, and raging. I feared for Susan and myself. I wondered if he had a weapon on him.

  The thought of confronting him was never an option—it was our anniversary, for God’s sake. Susan was with me. Neither did staying put make any sense. Susan was with me. Either to fight or sit tight might put her at risk.

  I needed to get away. I’d no idea how. But I knew I couldn’t escape the situation until I started the damn car. I tried to keep an eye on him and at the same time I tried to start the engine. It turned over, but kept stalling out. Frustration and panic were both rising fast.

  As the car started and stalled, it bounced and lurched forward a little bit. This growling man saw this, the car lurching, and he seemed to get more and more agitated. He seemed to be howling at me.

  I gave up on the eye contact with Sheppard. I looked down at the pedals and the stick shift and the ignition to see why the Saab wouldn’t start. As my eyes darted back up, I saw that it finally was moving forward—for all of a second. I hit the brakes. Another second. Now, Darcy Sheppard was draped over the hood of the car.

  During my frenzied attempts to start the car, as it stalled and stalled, the Saab lurched three times. The first, with the wheels angled to the right, moved the car away from Sheppard. With the second, there was still no contact with him or his bicycle. The third caused Sheppard to land on the hood. But it was at low speed, brief in duration and, because he was already so close to the car, left no discernible injury.

  But now he was furious. His bike was caught under the front bumper. He screamed at people on the sidewalk, “You’re a witness! You’re a witness!”

  By now, Susan was also yelling something. I don’t know what. And by now, I no longer cared what was behind me. I didn’t care if I had to ram the car behind me and push it back to Bay Street. I needed to get us out of there.

  I was now especially terrified of taking my eyes off him. But in order to back up, I had to. I looked behind me, turned my back on the beast. It looked clear enough. I put the Saab in reverse. As I was looking back, Sheppard hurled his backpack, containing a heavy bike lock, at us. It went sailing over my head.

  I put the car in first gear and tried to drive around him. Outraged, he raced toward the front of our car. I remember Susan screaming, “Oh, my God!” over and over.

  Chasing after us, he leapt at the Saab, as if in slow motion. Sheppard landed hip first, to break his fall, the way you see stuntmen-as-cops do the hood slide on crime shows. It made a crunching noise. I felt the impact of a man over 200 pounds landing on my car. He then grabbed the windshield wiper and bent it back toward him. He began pulling himself toward me, hand over hand, as if the wiper were a rope. The strength of the man was extraordinary. He seemed almost super-human.

  His upper torso was now on the hood’s edge, driver’s side, with the car still moving forward. He swung around, put his right arm inside the door, his left armpit around the side mirror. He held up his legs, a feat of some strength, no doubt assisted by the adrenalin that, I later learned, Darcy so often sought.

  The car suddenly swerved sharply to the left, almost 45 degrees. I have no recollection how that happened. He must have grabbed the wheel. In wrestling for control of the car, we crossed to the south side of the street, heading westbound into the eastbound lane.

  As it registered in my mind that my escape attempt had failed, I tried again. So I slammed on the brakes. But the Saab has antilock brakes. The stop wasn’t sudden enough to dislodge him. Nevertheless, there was a fair bit of torque. I could see him bending forward and hanging on, the side mirror cracking under the pressure. I remember thinking how strong he seemed to withstand that torque.

  Then, he said to me, with a crooked grin: “You’re not getting away that easy.”

  Less than 20 seconds had passed since he had said, “Now what’re ya gonna do?”

  Next, I tried to push Sheppard off the car door. It felt like trying to push over a telephone pole. He pushed back. I pushed again. He pushed back. Then he started climbing in the car. Susan grew louder and more frantic. “No! No! No! No! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  This was the only physical contact between us. The car remained stopped while this shoving was going on.

  I had stopped the car and couldn’t get him off. It seemed that when the car was stopped, he got closer to being on top of us; when the car was moving, he wasn’t.

  I started moving forward again.

  It felt to me like the Twilight Zone, where familiar streets are oddly abandoned. I registered no cars, no people. We just seemed to be heading into a tunnel. And it was getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

  The car never left first gear. It was very noisy, because the Saab was still in first gear and the car was revving so high, almost red-lining.

  At one point, it seemed like Sheppard was skiing beside the car, making the kinds of whooping noises you’d make if you were intentionally road-skiing for sport. A witness would later say his bicycle shoes were setting off sparks on the pavement. I remember thinking: he’s done this before.

  I couldn’t take my two hands off the wheel even if I’d wanted to. I was struggling with Darcy Sheppard for control of the vehicle.

  Then he was gone.

  All of a sudden, he just wasn’t there. I didn’t see him fall. I heard a sound, maybe a groan.

  From the moment of him jumping on the car to the point where I stopped the car with him on it, we had travelled about 100 metres.

  At first I felt relief, but for less than one breath. Now what was I going to do? Should I stop right now? I shouldn’t leave the scene of an accident. But I wanted to get away from this guy. Is he coming? I was not going to stop the car and let him come at us again after finally getting away. There was no one to help. I wanted to get somewhere safe.

  I looked up and saw Avenue Road in front of me. I saw the Hyatt hotel. It’s where our marriage counsellor had an office that could be entered through the hotel lobby. I routinely tore up in front of the Hyatt, getting overpriced valet parking because I was running late for our sessions in the marital intensive-care unit.

  So I turned right on Avenue Road and drove into the hotel’s circular driveway and found, I thought, sanctuary.

  I stopped the car and pulled up the emergency brake—for what would be the final time. I couldn’t find my cell phone. Susan offered hers. Neither of us today recall what was happening on her side of the car, other than that she was there, frozen, and terrified.

  I dialled 911. I began to describe what happened. I wanted police to get there quickly—to protect Susan and me. I said
we’d been attacked by a man on a bicycle on Bloor Street. A transcript was made of this, of course.

  “He was literally picking fights with people on the corner of Yonge and Bloor, and putting obstacles in the way and trying to stop cars from going,” I told the operator. “We all avoided him, drove past him, and then he came back. I’m in a convertible so he came back and he started—I mean, I thought he took a swing at me, but whatever, he missed. And then he pulled in front of me and stopped. I slammed on the brakes and I tried to get away, and then he—the next thing I know, he’s, like, literally trying to climb into my car.”

  When asked where Sheppard was, I said: “Somewhere on Bloor, I assume.” She said an ambulance was on the scene. It was the first time it occurred to me that Darcy Sheppard had been injured.

  I told the operator I’d just “wanted to pull into a place where …” She seemed to understand. “Where you felt a little safer.” “Yeah,” I said.

  I suggested to Susan that she take a taxi home to relieve Sarah and care for the kids. I figured that I’d be only a few minutes behind her, depending on how long it took to give a statement to the police about the attack. That’s where my head was at: we were attacked, he was the attacker, and now he was to be arrested and charged.

  “I’ll be home soon,” I said to her.

  At 10:01 p.m., the police arrived as Susan climbed into a cab. My rescuers, I thought. But as soon as the constable driving got out of the car, I knew something was wrong, though I couldn’t say what. He was a huge guy. I walked up to him, to get close to him in case Sheppard arrived.

  The constable promptly manhandled me around to a spot in front of his squad car. He started pushing and poking me. He said I was in a lot of trouble. He kept asking how much I’d had to drink. In five different ways, he asked me if I’d imbibed. I told him I didn’t drink alcohol, period. “Yeah, okay,” he scoffed.

  “What’s going on?” I said. I couldn’t understand why I was being questioned. I’d called the police for protection. It never occurred to me that I’d done anything wrong.

  Susan was off to the side. She’d stepped out of the cab when she witnessed the police pushing me around. I assumed she was being questioned by the other officer. But she wasn’t. She was just watching, thinking, and trying to call for help—on a BlackBerry that suddenly kept resetting on her, over and over.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble,” he said again.

  It wasn’t registering. Why was I in trouble? I felt like we just had to get the have-you-been-drinking part over with, then reason would prevail and he would give me an update. I was imagining that Darcy Sheppard was in handcuffs right now.

  “You better hope he makes it back there,” the officer said. “You’re in a lot of trouble. It’s touch and go….”

  The constable was talking on the radio to his superior officer. The hotel valet handed me and the constable a bottle of water. I took it; he refused. There were more people milling about the driveway. Cars were pulling in and people getting out, and some were getting into cabs. I couldn’t see where Susan was standing. I was worried about her.

  Suddenly, I was being handcuffed. I was flabbergasted. I remember seeing the constable pulling the cuffs out, and my overpowering feeling of disbelief. Were these for me? Handcuffs? Really? REALLY! What will Susan think, seeing me being cuffed? I imagined she’d want to throw up.

  The kids were being babysat by our beloved Sarah; she started work at our place pretty early, so she didn’t like late-night babysitting. I knew that it was after 10 by now. Someone needs to contact Sarah, I thought. Susan should call her mom for support, I thought. I was suddenly ashamed of being in cuffs, and angry. They put my head down and sat me in the back of the squad car. Less than ten minutes had passed since the police had arrived at the Hyatt.

  “The cuffs are over the top,” I said to the constables, who were sitting in the front seat, whispering to each other, though I clearly could hear every word. “I’m not going anywhere. I could have sat in here without the cuffs.”

  “It’s standard procedure,” said one of the officers.

  For what? I thought. Standard procedure for what? What the hell was happening?

  There was more whispering and radio talk. Seconds became minutes became 20 minutes. Then we’d been there, waiting, for almost an hour. I didn’t speak a word after my outburst about the cuffs. At some point in that hour, the constable who’d been aggressive with me opened the door beside me, and finished his conversation on the radio:

  “Yeah, I’ll do that now,” he said.

  Do what now?

  I knew I was being detained pending investigation. I had a burning desire to talk with the constables but nothing came out. Something told me to shut up.

  “You’re under arrest … Dangerous driving … Criminal negligence … Right to retain a lawyer …”

  “I’m aware,” I mumbled, but I don’t think he heard me. Susan appeared inches from the side window on my left. “Are you okay?” she mouthed through the closed window. Then to the constable: “Can I talk to him?”

  Silence. They ignored her. “Hey! I just want to talk to my husband?!” More silence. “Just roll down the window.” They kept ignoring her. “Fine!”

  “MICHAEL!!” she yelled through the front window to me in the back of the cruiser. “WHO SHOULD I CALL?”

  I was happy to see her. She didn’t seem panicked. She seemed heroic.

  “A lawyer,” I answered, less than helpfully.

  “WHO!? WHO SHOULD I CALL?”

  Blank. Between those 28 seconds, being cuffed and put in the squad car, and then read my rights, I was unable to process much. The former Attorney General of Ontario, who’d spent most of his adult life rubbing shoulders with hundreds of Canada’s leading barristers, couldn’t name a single lawyer at the moment he most needed one.

  Then, I thought of someone who could help. I thought of Nikki Holland. Nikki had been my chief of staff for a time when I was in Cabinet. She was the first person I hired in the autumn of 1999 as a rookie MPP. Nikki was 23 back then, in ’99. I had hired her again at Invest Toronto, a decade later. She was extreme in all her qualities: eager, loyal, smart, and diligent. Nikki is part older sister, part mother, part younger cousin, and all best friend.

  So Susan called Nikki. As it happened, Nikki was driving home from a Liberal campaign meeting, less than a mile away, a meeting to support Dr. Eric Hoskins in his bid to win the by-election in St. Paul’s—the riding I had recently vacated. In the car with her was Emily Bullock, Hoskins’s campaign manager and my former political staffer extraordinaire for many years.

  Nikki saw the call display, so she answered the phone. She heard the words “Michael” in the same sentence as “arrested” and “the Hyatt.” Three minutes later, she was there.

  When I looked through the front window of the squad car to see Nikki materialize, I did a double-take. She and Susan would be a formidable force together. Watching them was my first experience with the freedom of helplessness. Others would help. I’d no choice but to let go.

  Big-city news media live by the police scanners and reports of the latest calamity to befall some citizen or other. Already, they had heard the report of what happened on Bloor Street and a crowd of reporters and cameras were gathering at the Hyatt.

  “Get me out of here,” the constable driving our squad car said over the radio to his superior officer. “There’s media everywhere.”

  Indeed, the media trucks would follow the car, filming me in the backseat. The “perp-shot,” they call it. I was in a blue Club Monaco t-shirt, jeans of some sort, and Converse sneakers, sitting on my handcuffed wrists.

  The constable’s words about getting out of there were somehow a welcome relief. I was enduring the experience of an arrest and squad-car detention, and I wanted to move on to whatever was next.

  The problem with next, I would learn, is that most of it took place in my head, in a cell, in a police station. I was about to enter my dark night of the
soul, a crucible reserved for all of us, often delivered without notice. But for me, the action was over. The rest of my story would be played out by others.

  Still, my life story at least would continue. Darcy Sheppard’s would not. It turned out that on the sidewalk near 131 Bloor Street West, there is a fire hydrant. The side cap of the hydrant points toward the north. It’s about a foot from the curb. As we drove past it, still fighting for the steering wheel, the side cap caught Darcy Sheppard’s left side, causing him to fall from the car. He struck the right side of his head on the curb or raised patch of asphalt, fatally damaging his brain stem.

  He was dead by the time the squad car, with me handcuffed in the backseat, headed south out of the Hyatt, toward the Toronto Police Service Traffic Division. He was declared DOA at the hospital. I would not learn that for several more hours.

  EIGHT

  The Cell

  For five long minutes, we were stuck outside the door in the sally port at the police station at 9 Hanna Avenue. Two constables and me, the alleged perp, with cuffs on tighter than ever, my wrists swelling a little from having sat on my cuffed hands in the squad car with media trucks running alongside. They’d buzzed twice at the door. Now a third time. The constables were visibly embarrassed about being locked out of their own division headquarters. Here they were with their prize turkey with no one to let them in.

  I knew that giving a statement was the last thing I should be doing, given that almost all arresting officers are more interested in building their case than in investigating it. In my case, within minutes of arriving at the scene, eyeing Darcy Sheppard dead or dying on the curb, the police had decided I’d committed a crime.