ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — When police surrounded an Empire Avenue home in St. John’s last November looking to arrest Kenny Green, they had followed him there after he led them on a chase through the centre of town.
RNC officers had been trying to find Green to speak with him about a serious assault on a man with a hammer that had occurred a few days earlier, but had the feeling Green was avoiding them. They visited his home and checked the local hospitals, to no avail, before two officers saw him driving a pickup on Aldershot Street. Green pulled over, but became upset when the constables told him he was being arrested on assault charges, asking whom he had assaulted, prosecutor Tannis King said in provincial court Tuesday.
“Mr. Green refused to exit (the truck), put the vehicle in drive saying he was not under arrest and began travelling down Mayor Avenue at a high rate of speed,” King said.
Two other RNC officers located the truck minutes later and watched it pull into the driveway of Green’s father’s Empire Avenue home. Police ran toward the basement of the home, where the truck was parked, finding it empty, with the driver’s side door open.
At that point more police arrived and surrounded the home, getting permission from Green’s father to enter, but finding the residence empty.
“Mr. Green Sr. informed (the sergeant) that Kenny Green was on his way to turn himself in to police, but he never did so,” King said.
After releasing a public appeal for information and warning people not to approach Green, RNC officers arrested him a day later during a traffic stop on Hamilton Avenue.
Green, 42, was charged with dangerous driving and resisting arrest in connection with the events of Nov. 23, as well as breaching a court-ordered curfew. He pleaded guilty to those charges Tuesday, as well as to charges of cocaine possession and breaching the province’s Family Violence Protection Act, laid in 2019.
Police had received a report around 2 a.m. one day in July that year from a man who said Green, whom he didn’t know, had knocked on his door, introduced himself, and asked him to call a cab. RNC officers found Green standing in the middle of Mundy Pond Road, screaming and waving a piece of wood.
“He was hallucinating. He indicated he was seeing people that were not there and that people were chasing him all night long, masked men with guns,” said prosecutor Trevor Bridger. “He even asked Const. Carter if he could see the people standing over by a pole watching him. There was no one there.”
Police found Green was carrying a bag of 13.7 grams of cocaine in his sock, Bridger said. Two months later, Green was arrested again for calling and texting a woman with whom he had been ordered to have no contact.
The two prosecutors pointed Judge James Walsh to Green’s criminal record — which includes prior drug offences, assaults and a manslaughter conviction in 2014 for the beating death of 47-year-old Joey Whalen in a home on Tessier Place.
Defence lawyer John Hartery told the judge Green is a father, he co-operated somewhat with the arresting RNC officers in the end and had contacted the police while he was at large.
Walsh gave Green 116 days enhanced remand credit and sentenced him to an extra 52 days in prison, to be followed by two years of probation.
Green is scheduled to go to trial next month on charges of assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm and breaching a release order related to the alleged beating with a hammer.
“Mr. Green is not disputing that there was an altercation. However, he does not agree with the comment that he hit anyone with a hammer,” Hartery said in court last month.
