DAWSON CITY – “I was shook up. It was the most scared I’d ever been,” Dawson RCMP Sgt. David Wallace told a Yukon Supreme Court jury trial Wednesday.

He was describing his reaction on Oct. 19, 2011, the day Mark McDiarmid came at his police truck with a sledge hammer, as the sergeant testified.

He said McDiarmid smashed the driver’s side headlight, dented the fender and put a hole through the windshield directly in front of where the sergeant was sitting.

Wallace had retreated back into his vehicle when what he thought would be a routine contact with McDiarmid suddenly went sour, the court was told.

Wallace had sought out McDiarmid to have him come to the detachment and settle some issues related to his bail conditions.

McDiarmid, 36, is facing seven charges – mischief in damaging a police vehicle, three counts of assaulting police officers, possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose, and two counts of attempted murder .

Wallace testified he had spoken with McDiarmid about a similar matter the previous August without it creating any sort of altercation.

Consequently, he testified, he had been taken by surprise when the latter had reacted negatively, had rummaged in the cab of his truck and had pulled out a blue sledgehammer.

Wallace, who had exited his truck to talk to McDiarmid outside his mother’s home on Boutillier Road, had begun to retreat to his vehicle when McDiarmid appeared angry and unco-operative.

He told Crown prosecutor David McWhinnie his first thought was that McDiarmid was reaching for a rifle.

He didn’t know just why that came to mind, since his relations with the man had been cordial up to then.

Earlier in August, before the first bail incident, he had stopped to assist McDiarmid when his truck had quit on Pierre Berton Drive, and had used the police truck to tow him to a safer parking place.

He conceded his thoughts were no doubt coloured by news of an incident that had occurred to a colleague in another community.

With Wallace backing his truck out of reach, McDiarmid exited the other end of the short residential road onto the Klondike Highway and headed south across the Ogilvie Bridge.

Wallace, in his damaged vehicle, returned to the Front Street detachment and reported the events to his superiors in Whitehorse.

Wallace went on to describe in some detail the events of the next day, during which six officers, in three vehicles, attempted to apprehend McDiarmid in the area of the North Fork Road and Dempster Highway.

Acting on information that the suspect was working in a woodlot fairly near the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in’s R22 compound, the police planned to box him in on the side road, deflate his tires with a spike belt if he attempted to run, and take him into custody.

The plan was somewhat frustrated by poor communications, the court heard.

The police radios needed a repeater boost to allow them to communicate with each other, and they had to relay from vehicle to vehicle as the hours wore on toward twilight and darkness on that October evening.

McDiarmid rolled over the spike belt and continued to the junction of the North Fork Road and Dempster Highway, turning north before coming to a stop.

He was closely followed in a police car by Constables Jeff Nielson and David Marentette, who pulled up behind him when he stopped.

By then, Wallace and another officer had cleared away the spike belt and begun to follow the other two vehicles. Wallace said he was leaving his vehicle when he heard the others say shots had been fired.

In the Crown’s summary of the events, prosecutor Jennifer Grandy had earlier described how McDiarmid came out of his truck, threw a jar filled with some gasoline compound at the constables and advanced on them with what turned out to be a splitting maul.

Wallace had thought at the time it was a large axe.

Wallace said Nielson fired two shots and Marentette fired one.

He approached McDiarmid, who was lying on the ground, and tried to ascertain the extent of his injuries.

The man said nothing at first, but did eventually complain that his hands, cuffed behind his back, were getting cold.

Wallace observed that he was sweating. Concerned that he might be going into shock, he had him conveyed to the rear of one of the police cruisers, to keep him warm while they continued to look for his wounds. They only located two of the three.

One of the cruisers had been dispatched to get to within radio range to request an EMS ambulance, which was reported to be on its way.

Wallace, however, decided it would be best to go and meet it, which they did about 35 minutes later, just north of the Dawson City Airport.

Later examination at the Dawson City Health Centre (the new hospital’s predecessor) revealed McDiarmid had been shot twice around his right hip and once in his left shoulder.

Cpl. Dave Morin (since promoted to sergeant and now in charge of the Dawson detachment) was left on the Dempster to secure the scene and isolate the constables in separate vehicles while they recorded the event separately.

Morin also confiscated their duty belts, which Wallace said is standard procedure in such cases.

The pair, who are no longer posted in Dawson, were cleared of any inappropriate actions just over a year later in a report from the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.

Earlier Wednesday, Judge Elizabeth Hughes instructed the jurors in the niceties of court procedure, their duty to deliberate only on the evidence presented and clues by which they might be expected to evaluate testimony.

Wallace’s testimony took up the rest of the morning and continued after the noon break until 4:30 p.m.

A good deal of the Crown’s questioning had to do with the exact locations where events took place, the special relationships among the various officers and the accused, identifying marks on the various vehicles and lots of physical minutia.

There was much repetition, as well as identification of locations on sketch maps and aerial photographs.