A lawyer representing a man accused of murder told the Supreme Court that prosecutors had painted an incomplete portrait of the crime and its circumstances.

Charles Richardson said the Crown had attempted to create a narrative linking the circumstantial evidence against Kiari Tucker in the case — but called the links tenuous at best.

“You are being asked by the prosecution to treat the evidence before you like a complex puzzle where the pieces are not easy to find, but they are there,” he said.

“But some of the pieces are missing and others are obscured.”

Mr Tucker, 27, has denied the November 3, 2017, murder of Morlan Steede, 35, as well as the use of a firearm to commit an indictable offence.

CCTV footage played during the trial showed Mr Tucker and others on Court Street hours before the fatal shooting of Mr Steede.

At about 9.11pm, CCTV footage from Deepdale appeared to show a figure in dark clothing and a helmet walking through the area.

The same camera recorded a man in a white shirt running down One Way Deepdale, followed by a person dressed all in black, at about 9.40pm.

As they ran, flashes of light were seen coming from the outstretched arm of the person in black.

The court heard that Mr Steede suffered four gunshot wounds, with the fatal shot passing through his left lung and heart.

Mr Tucker was arrested the next afternoon after police found him under a pile of clothing in a bedroom closet.

Mr Richardson accepted that Mr Tucker had attempted to hide from the police but said that it was not necessarily a sign he had a guilty conscience — arguing that it would not be unusual for young men to hide from armed officers appearing outside their home.

He insisted that there was no evidence showing that the man seen in Deepdale at 9.11pm was the same person seen chasing Mr Steede half an hour later.

“It is a very important link that the Crown cannot make,” he said. “The only commonality between them is dark clothing and a helmet.”

Mr Richardson said that if the two men were not the same, than gait evidence put forward by the prosecution to link the earlier footage to Mr Tucker was irrelevant.

He argued that the Crown had also failed to prove a man on the back of a bike seen on King Street that evening was the defendant.

Mr Richardson told the court that in order for it to be the defendant on the vehicle, he would have needed to change his pants and shoes and travel to the area in only 18 seconds.

He added that while the Crown suggested in its closing statement that the man was wearing the same type of pants as Mr Tucker, none of the witnesses had identified a white stripe on the side of the passenger’s pants.

Mr Richardson said the Crown’s timeline also fell apart when explaining how Mr Tucker allegedly returned to Court Street from Deepdale after the shooting if he had, as claimed, made a phone call from Deepdale ten minutes after the shooting.

“If he was in Deepdale, there’s no way he made it back to Court Street running in two minutes,” he said.

While Mr Richardson said that Mr Tucker did visit the Deepdale area earlier in the evening, there was no evidence to support the allegation that it had been a “scouting mission” or that there was any animosity between him and the victim.

“Let’s be real about it,” he said. “People don’t kill other people for no reason.”

Mr Richardson went on to say that particles characteristic of gunshot residue found on the defendant’s hands and clothes could have been transferred from another source during his arrest, his transportation by police and the time spent at Hamilton Police Station.

The trial continues.

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