Witness testimony from two hockey parents is painting a different picture of what happened at the Espanola arena last year where an off-duty Sudbury police officer was accused of assaulting a player.
Melisa Rancourt’s trial continued virtually Friday morning due to an impending storm, with the defence appearing by video from the Espanola courthouse.
Rancourt, 51, was coaching a youth hockey team Feb. 11, 2024, when she was charged with assaulting and threatening a 12-year-old player from the opposing team in the hallway after a game.
The assault charge was later dropped. She is being tried on charges of uttering threats and causing a disturbance.
READ: Sudbury officer testifies she didn’t threaten anyone after heated hockey game in Espanola
The trial resumed Thursday when two different versions of events were described in court in testimony from Rancourt and Maverine Bain, the hockey mom who made the allegations.
Bain originally accused Rancourt of grabbing two young players by the collar, but later retracted her statement, the court heard.
Meanwhile, the Sudbury officer maintains she didn’t threaten or assault anyone.
What the video shows
When court resumed Friday morning, two defence witnesses testified: Sonia Botelho and her fiancé, Greg Wells.
Defence attorney Len Walker played surveillance video from the arena hallway where the alleged incident took place.
The video showed a team of hockey players entering and crossing the hallway before entering the changeroom.
Rancourt, with short, spiky, grey hair, was identified as coming down the hallway toward where the players were entering in the video.
Hockey mom Sonia Botelho testified that she knows Rancourt as her stepson’s hockey coach.
Botelho identified a woman in the video wearing a grey sweatshirt as another hockey mom “who had the altercation with Melisa.”
She said the other hockey was “acting aggressively that day” and “came out of nowhere throwing the F-word around and calling Melisa the B-word.”
Botelho said the woman was screaming and yelling verbal slurs.
The video shows Botelho walking behind Wells in the now crowded hallway when he stops briefly to face the woman in the grey sweatshirt and has a short verbal exchange.
She said her fiancé told the woman to stop as it was a child’s hockey game and that her yelling was unnecessary and inappropriate.
The couple’s faces remain calm throughout the interaction.
The woman could be seen in the video holding the hand of a small child who looked to be a toddler.
“Melisa was calm, cool, collected, wasn’t yelling,” Botelho testified about the defendant’s response to the woman’s behaviour.
“Like any adult, she was just calm.”
She added that she didn’t recall Rancourt saying anything to the other woman.
Wells engaged the woman in a back-and-forth before walking away.
‘Yelling and swearing’
Wells testified as the defence attorney replayed the video surveillance.
He said he heard a woman “yelling and swearing” at Rancourt in the hallway.
In response, he said to the crowd “It’s a kid’s hockey game, grow up.”
That is when he said the woman wearing the grey sweatshirt in the video told him to shut up and mind his own (F-ing) business.
Wells said he heard the woman use profanity toward Rancourt, but that the coach didn’t say anything back.
A third defence witness was scheduled to testify Friday afternoon.
‘Witnesses who lied to police’
In the defence’s closing argument Friday afternoon, Walker said it was Bain who was the aggressor in the incident, not Rancourt.
“The Crown is relying on witnesses who lied to police initially,” he said.
“Thankfully, the witnesses were shown the video and that what they said initially wouldn’t be accepted.”
While the Crown lacks evidence, Walker said his client’s testimony is that she never said those things and she is entitled to be believed.
“If we didn’t have the video, we wouldn’t know,” he said.
“On the totality of the evidence, the other two charges -- the assault and causing a disturbance -- couldn’t be proved.”
During his closing argument, he mentioned the Browne and Dunn rule, which gives a witness a chance to explain contradictory evidence.
Was a threat made?
In his final submissions, assistant Crown attorney David Kirk called the first two defence witnesses’ testimonies “a bit of a hatchet job” on Bain’s character.
“They were totally unhelpful because they didn’t hear what the accused said,” Kirk said.
“The last, well-meaning witness, you can’t cobble it together with anyone else’s. When you compare it, it can’t be accurate.”
He described Rancourt’s testimony as “selling a narrative that she was above everything,” calling it an “oversell.”
The Crown said earlier testimony described Rancourt as “excited” and “seething” after the game, ”throwing tantrums and yelling at the ref."
Walker disputed that description, arguing the video doesn’t match that characterization.
“No one seeing that video would say she was seething,” he said.
In response to the Browne v. Dunn rule, Kirk said the Crown witnesses were not cross-examined about being mistaken in their descriptions of Rancourt.
During the hockey game in question, one of the players for the Walden team allegedly skated by the home team’s bench and blew a kiss.
The Crown’s theory is that Rancourt was angry about that gesture, so she went down the hall to talk to the other team’s coaches, but ended up taking out her anger on two players by threatening them.
While the 12-year-old hockey player admitted on the stand that he made mistakes in what he told police happened, he was consistent about the threat allegedly made by Rancourt.
He testified that Rancourt said she would break his ankles and make sure he would never skate again. He also said it scared him because she seemed serious due to her tone and the fact that she wasn’t smiling.
“If you guys do another celebration like that, I’ll make sure you never skate again,” the boy testified she said.
Both sides claim testimony from another off-duty officer who overheard part of the conversation between Rancourt and the two players in the hallway corroborates their narratives.
The other off-duty officer was in a nearby change room when he said he heard “next time they skate by the bench,” but didn’t hear the rest of the sentence.
The Crown contends that the rest of the sentence was Rancourt talking about “breaking the ankles.”
In his rebuttal to the Crown’s final submission, Walker said that rest of the sentence was “the next time the players skate by the bench and blows a kiss, you better hope the refs don’t see.”
The matter is scheduled to return virtually April 22 at 9:30 a.m.
As a result of the accusations, the police officer with 26 years of service is currently suspended from her job with Sudbury police and as a coach for the Espanola Minor Hockey League.
CTVNewsNorthernOntario.ca will continue to follow the case and provide updates.
