Today's Gazette
Parasiris angry at police
'They made up evidence' Laval cops still maintain that he is linked to drugs
JEFF HEINRICH, The Gazette
Published: Sunday, June 15Freshly acquitted of first-degree murder in the killing of a Laval police officer, Basil Parasiris expressed more anger yesterday than relief over the verdict.
Anger, because the high-profile trial left him unjustly branded as a drug trafficker, he told The Gazette.
In a brief interview, the 42-year-old former businessman accused the police of "making up" evidence that fingers him as part of a cocaine-trafficking ring.
The suspicion cast on him was baseless, and the cops' effort before the trial to pin the drug rap on him is returning now to "stab them in the back," Parasiris said by phone from suburban Brossard.
"It didn't affect the jury ... but this was (something that affected) the public opinion, you know?" Nonsense, a Laval police spokesperson retorted after being told what Parasiris had said.
If he's upset about being linked to drugs, he has only himself to blame, said Constable Nathalie Lorrain.
"It's certain that, for us, yes, he was mixed up in it, and we still believe so." Nine Laval police officers were conducting a drug raid when they stormed Parasiris's home on Rimouski Crescent in Brossard before dawn on March 2, 2007.
The raid ended quickly and bloodily. Thinking his home had been invaded by criminals, from the door of his upstairs bedroom Parasiris drew a gun and opened fire.
The four bullets that left his licensed .357 magnum revolver hit their mark. One of the officers, Constable Daniel Tessier, was killed, and another, Stéphane Forbes, was hit in the arm.
In the 30-second shootout, Parasiris's wife, Penny Gounis, was also hit in the arm as she cowered in the bedroom closet.
The couple's two children, age 15 and 7, were in their own bedrooms and, though panicked and traumatized, were not physically harmed.
During the murder trial, jurors were never told why the police had come to the house in the first place.
In a decision rendered before they began hearing evidence, Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer ruled the warrant that allowed the police to conduct the raid was a violation of Parasiris's rights and was inadmissable in court.
To get it, police had tried to link the businessman to a small Chomedey drug ring involving his godson, Emmanuel Mavroudis, and several other Laval men.
As part of a series of drug raids that morning, the cops got permission to use "dynamic entry" to get into Parasiris's home and collect evidence. With a battering ram, they knocked down his front door and stormed the house under the cover of darkness.
The extraordinary technique was meant to surprise the suspect and prevent any drugs from being disposed of before the cops could get to them.
Although police say a small quantity of cocaine was eventually found in the house after the raid, they were disappointed not to uncover what they had really come for: a much larger stash of coke they believed Parasiris had been intending to traffic.
Instead, the cops walked away with 13 cellphones, four pagers and eight pages of documents that, according to a Sûreté du Québec investigator who testified during Parasiris's bail hearing in May 2007, looked like the accounts of a drug trafficker.
