Videos at ex-world junior hockey players' sex assault trial show dancing, drinking at bar

Court is starting to come back after a lunch break.

We're just waiting for the judge and then more live updates should be coming soon as the afternoon session kicks off.

The Crown’s video stopped working, so court is on a longer recess for lunch for IT to come in and fix things (again).

Court’s scheduled to resume at 2 p.m. ET (unless the tech issues take longer to resolve).

We’re just on a short break now. The courtroom is especially sweltering today, maybe because of the extra bodies in here because the overflow room was closed (it’s now reopened, we’re hearing).

The detective will continue showing video and photo evidence after the break.

Side note: The music in the videos taken by the players is the subject of chatter for those of us who don’t know the songs that were popular in 2018. Those videos are the only ones we have sound on. Some younger reporters are helping us to decipher the music.

Besides Kid Cudi, we’ve also heard Mr. Brightside by the Killers and Yeah 3x by Chris Brown. Shoutout to Ariella Garmaise from The Walrus for figuring those out.

Some of the players at Jack’s bar that night took videos on their phones, and we are seeing some of them.

In one 16-minute clip taken on Batherson’s phone, Batherson, McLeod, Foote and Maxime Comtois (a former NHLer) are seen whooping, jumping up and down, and generally having a good time while singing along to the song Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi.

The jury was also shown a still photo from Jack’s social media, including McLeod, Batherson and Howden. E.M. can be seen just out of the frame.

Another video, showing the dance floor and taken on McLeod’s phone, has music thumping and several players in the shot, including Jake Bean on Maccarone’s shoulders.

The jury just watched a video of E.M. at a smaller bar within Jack’s where she’s seen speaking to McLeod. The two are chatting for the video, with McLeod casually leaning with his arm on the bar counter and E.M. with her back against it.

They order drinks: E.M. does two shots and McLeod does one shot. He’s also holding a drink.

There’s also a 13-second video being shown that Waque says came from Drake Batherson’s phone (he currently plays for the Ottawa Senators and is on the list for possible witnesses at this trial).

The clip shows a super crowded dance floor and there’s sound. It was taken sometime between midnight and 2:30 a.m. on June 19, 2018. It was hard for cops to determine the exact time because some of the players’ phones were from different time zones.

The dancing video shows the following people smiling at the camera: Jake Bean, Foote, Batherson, Brett Howden and Cale Makar.

In another video, Tyler Steenbergen is shown at the bar, as well as Matt Maccarone, who Waque says was not on the team but was out with them that night.

We’re back and the detective is back in the witness box.

The first video we saw today was of E.M. at an ATM toward the back of the bar. We’d previously seen a video of the same thing but from a different angle.

We’re also shown a video from a smaller bar within Jack’s.

“That is Brett Howden,” Waque explains as a man talks to E.M. (He is now a centre with the Las Vegas Golden Nights).

Howden leaves the small bar area and soon, he returns with McLeod. McLeod starts speaking to E.M. Howden and McLeod are both in baseball caps worn backwards in the video.

When the videos play in court, the accused men watch them on the screens set up at each defence table. All the players are once again wearing dark suits except Hart, who is in his burgundy suit (yesterday, he wore a light grey one).

Again, there’s no sound on the videos, and it’s pretty hushed in the courtroom as everyone watches the screens. The ones we’ve been watching today were taken between 11:40 p.m. and midnight.

I’m Katie Nicholson, a CBC senior reporter usually based in Toronto but I’m here in London with my colleagues.

We are recessed again. One thing the public probably isn’t aware of is how many technical gremlins the court has been dealing with.

Zoom is down this morning, there have been connectivity issues in the courtroom, and just now, a program’s doorbell started dinging in the room before the witness could really get started. So, while IT once again races to the floor, we are taking a break.

These issues also make it difficult for counsel to retrieve materials and exhibits that might be stored in a Cloud platform.

I started my morning in the overflow court (it’s easier to run outside and do live TV hits from that spot) where a lonely officer haplessly tried to connect us to Zoom a few times. Now, I am up in the main courtroom where I can watch things unfold live … once all these issues are ironed out.

So far, everyone has been pretty good-natured about these technical glitches, but they sure do slow down what is supposed to be an already lengthy trial.

We’re back up and running this morning in London court.

The jury is about to be brought in and we expect London police Det. Tiffany Waque (pronounced wah-kay, in case you’re wondering) to get back in the witness box and continue showing surveillance video taken from Jack’s bar the night of June 18, 2018, and into the early morning of June 19, 2018.

More people are in the main courtroom because there’s an issue with the Zoom link that beams the trial down to the overflow room (and to accredited media watching remotely). So people who are usually downstairs in the overflow room are here on the 14th floor in Courtroom 21.

Carroccia told the jury there might be a longer break after Waque is done testifying to deal with the technical issues.

I had an interesting conversation last night with Mark Lazerus, a senior NHL writer for The Athletic, based in Chicago.

Two of his colleagues, Katie Strang and Dan Robson, are here covering the trial, but otherwise, Lazerus says the case doesn’t seem to be on the radar of many sports journalists or fans in the U.S.

“It was a pretty big deal when the players’ names came out, when we were able to put names to this, kind of like, mystery, because everybody knew who was on that roster. I felt like that was going to be a watershed moment,” he told me.

“I remember writing a column saying like, ‘You can't hide from it anymore. You can't pretend this isn't real. … These are the players you've rooted for. These are players whose jerseys you've bought.’”

And while the public interest and media coverage have continued in Canada, it has died down in the U.S.

“It doesn't seem to have had the impact that I thought it was going to have. … It was kind of moving on to the next thing.”

Right now, Lazerus says, everyone is much more interested in the NHL playoffs than a trial about some then junior hockey players in Canada, even though the five have all had ties to NHL teams.

Lazerus hopes this trial, no matter the verdict, will ultimately draw attention to problems within the junior hockey system — a culture many have criticized for creating an atmosphere of misogyny and homophobia — and maybe provide impetus for change.

“I don't know if there's been such a high-profile case involving such prominent players that were so young at the time,” he says. “It feels like we've seen a lot more of it come out of the hockey world than we have in other sports at that age.”

I’m Karen Pauls, a senior reporter for CBC, in London covering this trial.

I popped over to the London Knights versus Kitchener Knights game Sunday afternoon to chat with folks about what they’re paying more attention to: the playoffs (CHL and NHL) or this trial down the street.

The streets were filled with fans wearing jerseys and carrying noisemakers. Not surprisingly, the focus here during the OHL playoffs is on the home team.

“For me, more attention to the playoffs, to be honest. I'll let what happen happens,” Tom Johnston told me (he’s the guy on the right with the muscles). “I’ll let the courts deal with it.”

Nancy Blackall has been a Knights fan since she was a young girl. She’s not paying attention to the trial and believes the allegations “shouldn't reflect on the game itself.”

Paula DiDomenico says the case hasn’t come up much in her circles.

“There was a lot of talk about it a little while ago when they first brought the charges to them, so we're just hearing a little bit on the news now,” DiDomenico said, adding she thinks hockey culture has changed — for the better — in recent years.

I asked my CBC Manitoba colleague Gavin Axelrod to pose some of the same questions to Winnipeg Jets fans after a viewing party Sunday afternoon for their game against the St. Louis Blues.

While most of the responses were similar, Josh Rempel said, “The trials in London are just kind of the first step in beginning the change of that culture where it's all about protecting each other, and instead it's about doing the right thing.

“This is really starting to finally look like there might be some change on the horizon, which is a really big thing for me. I've got two young kids that I want to put into hockey myself, but the culture that exists right now is so bad in so many different places that it's not a really great place for anybody.”