DAWSON CITY – As his trial resumed Monday, Mark McDiarmid picked up where he’d left off in his cross-examination of RCMP Sgt. David Wallace before the week-long hiatus in the jury portion of the proceedings.

McDiarmid continued to attempt to poke holes in Wallace’s testimony, as given to the Yukon Supreme Court on Jan. 21-22.

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.

The trial in Dawson had recessed to Whitehorse for a partial week of procedural matters due to the unavailability of one juror and the judge.

The Dawson portion of the trial restarted Monday morning after the late arrival of Justice Elizabeth Hughes and some others due to the -39 temperatures slowing down air transport from Whitehorse.

With court scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., the jury was called in closer to 11:30, sat until close to 1 p.m. and picked up again between 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Crown prosecutors David McWhinnie and Jennifer Grandy are presenting the case against McDiarmid, who has declined legal aid and is representing himself.

He is surrounded by tubs packed with evidence binders, two laptop computers and a multitask printer/scanner/copier.

It has been the evidence of the Crown, as presented by Wallace, that the RCMP tracked down McDiarmid on Oct. 20, 2011, following the events of the previous day when he attacked Wallace while the sergeant was in his cruiser.

Having determined that McDiarmid was working in a wood lot along the North Fork Road, just off the Dempster Highway, six officers in three vehicles laid a trap with a spike belt to flatten his tires, causing him to stop his flatbed red truck while he was heading north on the Dempster Highway.

When McDiarmid allegedly ran at the officers in the lead RCMP car while brandishing what turned out to be a splitting maul, Constables Jeff Nielson and David Marentette shot him three times. This happened at the time Wallace and Const. Jordan McIntyre were arriving on the scene, so Wallace didn’t actually see it happen.

First aid was administered on the site and McIntyre was dispatched to get to radio range so an ambulance could be called.

When he returned, Wallace decided it would be best for McDiarmid if they went to meet the EMS crew on the Klondike Highway, which they did just south of the Dawson airport.

McIntyre accompanied the ambulance to Dawson and Wallace followed in his cruiser, as can be seen in the VIC video.

McDiarmid’s cross-examination on this day went just beyond this point in the narrative, but mainly focused on events around the time he ran over the spike belt, came to a stop, was shot and was conveyed to the ambulance.

He contended that he actually came to a stop either earlier or differently angled than in Wallace’s testimony, though his questions on Monday put his truck in a different location than his questions on Jan. 23.

He suggested that dark spots on the snow at the location he pointed to Monday were where he had actually bled, and snow had been kicked over it to hide the stain.

He quizzed Wallace repeatedly about the tires on his truck, trying to establish that the officers had changed the flats on his vehicle to stage a fake VIC video more in line with their account of that night’s events.

At various points, he tried to pair Wallace with several other officers and shuffle the order of the pairing of the six men.

McDiarmid also tried to demonstrate that another officer, whom Wallace had said was home sick that day, was actually at the scene on the Dempster.

Taking another tack, he suggested that Wallace had actually been with another officer in a different vehicle using the Tintina Trench lookoff as a place from which to spot his truck. Wallace denied this.

McDiarmid also suggested that snippets of a radio transcript suggested that Wallace had been in a plane earlier in the day – he might had flown it himself – in order to spot him from the air.

Wallace responded that the conversation might have referred to a plan which he had hoped to put into practice, but which fell through when no pilot was available for the job.

As for flying himself, he said he maintains his licence at a bare qualification level, and never flies solo until after he has flown with a more experienced pilot for enough hours to feel competent. At any rate, he said, he does not own an aircraft and certainly would never simply borrow one.

McDiarmid quizzed Wallace on the details of what happened after the shooting. Wallace said he had monitored McDiarmid at his head, trying unsuccessfully to get some response from him while McIntyre searched his torso and lower body to determine where he had been hit.

They were only able to find two of the three wounds while at the site, or later, when they transferred him to the back of Wallace’s police truck.

There is some disagreement between the two men as to the order of the things McDiarmid said when he finally did speak.

Wallace remembers him complaining that his hands were cold.

McDiarmid says his first words were, “What the f--- did you hit me with?”

Wallace agrees he said that, but later.

McDiarmid recalls saying that he couldn’t feel his leg, which had taken two bullets. Wallace recalls him saying his leg hurt.

Wallace said that McDiarmid told him, “You’ve gone over to the dark side,” and that his (McDiarmid’s) “black people will get me.” The sergeant was puzzled by that last remark, court heard.

McDiarmid asked if Wallace recalled having a five-minute consultation with another officer off to the side of one of the cruisers while he was still on the ground, and saying something to the effect that “he can’t die here.”

Wallace responded that he may very well have consulted with his three remaining colleagues (Nielsen and Marentette having already been isolated in separate vehicles after the shooting) but that he did not say those words.

Concluding his questioning of the witness on Monday afternoon, McDiarmid referenced three radio transmissions from Wallace’s vehicle that were somehow not recorded by the VIC system even though other vehicle noises and the sounds of the ambulance in front of the cruiser could be heard.

It had been established on an earlier day that radio transmissions caused a slight distortion in the VIC video, and McDiarmid pointed to this as evidence of the brief radio bursts.

McDiarmid indicated that he had located a 16-minute gap between the video recording and the transmission logs.

Discussion with the judge and Crown counsel about how to determine the validity of this observation ran out the clock on Monday afternoon’s session.

Hughes stepped in many times to caution McDiarmid that his role at this point is to ask questions rather than make statements. She cut him off when he returned to some of the same questions many times after they’d already been answered.

The judge also cautioned that Wallace could not be expected to comment on events for which he was not present or had no particular expertise.

The cross-examination was scheduled to continue this week.