The trial of an Osoyoos resident accused of shooting a man on Canada Day in 2022 had a bumpy start. 

Steven Marlo Gallagher abruptly re-elected on Nov. 22, to go from a judge and jury trial to a trial by judge alone, less than a week before things were scheduled to begin. 

The 32-year-old is charged with one count of aggravated assault, one count of pointing a firearm and one count of firing a firearm. However, the prolific violent is currently in jail where he is serving out sentences for arson and other unrelated firearms crimes from 2021. 

On Nov. 25, following a request from Crown for accommodations for Gallagher's ex-wife to testify from another room in the courthouse via closed-circuit television, Gallagher's defence made their own request to put testimony from four different witnesses into a voir dire. 

The voir dire, often considered a trial within a trial, would have determined the admissibility of any evidence produced within it and whether it would be allowed in the trial proper. 

Following submissions and case law presented on Nov. 25 and a follow-up discussion on Nov. 26, the planned start of the trial, Madam Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick determined that a voir dire was unnecessary and would only complicate the proceedings. 

"In my view, the voir dire is not justified on the basis of trial efficiency, if nothing it adds more complexity and delay than is necessary," said Fitzpatrick. "In fact, it has already caused a delay in the trial. 

Following the Justice's decision, Crown prosecution began laying out their side of what was scheduled to be a 10-day trial.

The key focus from both the defence and the Crown, as noted by the Justice in her decision over the voir dire, will be on the identification evidence from the witnesses. 

Crown began by laying out how the victim had gone to White Sands beach in Osoyoos with a group of friends, while at the same time, Stephen Gallagher and his own group had set up on the hill just above the beach. 

The victim's friends had included Gallagher's ex-wife, who has children with him, and one other who had gone to school with Gallagher. Gallagher's ex-wife pointed him out to one of the others in the group shortly after they arrived. 

"For the first half-hour, there was no interaction with the groups," said the Crown. "At some point, Mr. Gallagher began to kick sand down the hill at [the group]."

Two of the group asked Gallagher to stop, and Gallagher responded by wanting to fight the man who asked him to stop. The other male member of the group attempted to intervene in an attempt to break up the fight. 

"It was at this point that Mr. Gallagher pulled out a firearm and began to shoot several times in the air and at the sand," said the Crown. "I expect Chris will tell you he heard a pop and felt a searing pain in his eyebrow."

Gallagher continued to fire shots into the air as the group fled the scene, and after getting to a nearby campground the group found that the victim had been shot in the hip, with a clear entry and exit wound. 

The first on the witness list was Sgt. Jason Bayda, head of the Osoyoos RCMP Detachment, who testified to how police responded that night.

He said that the entire detachment had received a tone alert, which is reserved for serious incidents like armed robberies, and that he and other officers responded to the scene. 

Once on scene, Bayda noted that when he found the victim at the campground office, he could see the inch-and-a-half-long wound over his right eye, before he was shown the shot through the hip. 

The group informed Bayda that the police should look for Gallagher as the perpetrator.

Bayda later returned to the beach to assist in the search for shell casings with a member of the forensic identification section, who brought a metal detector due to the terrain. 

A single shell casing was recovered, on the shoulder of the back country road that comes up to the backside of the hill over White Sands, about 50 yards away from where the main incident took place. 

Testimony is set to continue with multiple witnesses over the next two weeks, but even if he is found not guilty, Gallagher won't be going free any time soon. 

Gallagher is currently set to be in jail until 2028 over previous crimes, including the "vengeance-based arson" of an Oliver Pharmacy in 2021, which happened just six weeks after being caught in possession of multiple firearms while under a 10-year ban following reports of shots being fired on Penticton Indian Band Land.