Lindsay assault trial starts next week
An Edmonton murder suspect accused of stabbing an undercover Mountie in Barriere last fall before allegedly twice stabbing his cellmate at Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre during a game of Scrabble is slated to stand trial next week.
Mark Lindsay, who is being held in custody in Alberta on a second-degree murder charge, is expected to appear in person at the Kamloops Law Courts on Monday, Aug. 13, to stand trial on two counts of aggravated assault.
The son of a former Edmonton police chief, the 25-year-old is alleged to have stabbed his cellmate twice in the same eye — once with a pen and once with a pencil — last October.
The cellmate, a 21-year-old Kelowna man, was left blinded in one eye.
That incident took place about a month after Lindsay entered KRCC following his arrest north of Kamloops.
He was apparently the subject of an RCMP Mr. Big undercover operation, in which officers pose as gangsters in an attempt to convince a suspect to confess to a crime.
On Sept. 21 in Barriere, Lindsay is alleged to have stabbed an undercover Mountie he’d been travelling with from Edmonton to Kamloops.
In a series of exclusive jailhouse interviews last year, Lindsay told KTW he and the officer were hauling what he believed to be quads in a trailer being pulled by a pickup truck.
Lindsay is alleged to have stolen the truck following the altercation. He was arrested by Kamloops Mounties near McLure a short time later.
Speaking with KTW, Lindsay said he had no idea the man he was with was an undercover police officer.
It’s believed the Mr. Big investigation was launched after Lindsay’s ex-girlfriend, 31-year-old Dana Turner, went missing in Edmonton.
Turner vanished in August 2011, days after Lindsay was released from an Alberta jail after serving 50 days for stabbing her in the head last June.
The mother of three’s body was found in a farmer’s field in central Alberta last October.
In March, RCMP in Edmonton announced they’d charged Lindsay with second-degree murder in relation to Turner’s death.
Lindsay was originally slated to stand trial in June on the KRCC stabbing charge, but the two trials were rolled into one.
He had also initially requested trial by judge and jury on both charges, but later changed his election to B.C. Supreme Court judge alone.
His preliminary inquiry on the Alberta murder charge is expected to begin next year.
Lindsay is the son of former Edmonton police chief John Lindsay, who is now a deacon in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton.
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