Court hears how 2 metal pipes became a gun in Michael Arcand's standoff with Saskatoon police

Sgt. Grant Linklater didn't know at first if he was dealing with a gun or not.

Linklater is a Saskatoon police officer and member of the force's tactical support unit.

He testified at Michael Arcand's trial on Thursday that he came upon Arcand, 35, standing behind the tail light of a parked truck in front of the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT) downtown campus in September 2017.

Many pedestrians were out on the street that day summer day, some of them filming the tense standoff on their phones.

As Linklater told Court of Queen's Bench at Arcand's attempted murder trial this week, he saw Arcand holding a black metal pipe in both hands, as if grasping a hockey stick.

"Drop the pipe! Drop the pipe! Put it down!" officers yelled, to no avail, at Arcand, who paced back and forth.

"It got longer and shorter," said Linklater of the pipe.

He assessed the situation, he told the court: he thought the pipe could still do serious damage and he didn't want Arcand to run away, yet he didn't feel he had reason to use lethal force.

So he used his Taser on Arcand, twice.

During the second Taser shot, Linklater finally got a vivid sense of what Arcand was holding.

"His metal pipe makes a very loud bang," said Linklater, who also recalled a small puff of smoke coming from the pipe muzzle.

"It startled me."

'Like he was pumping it'

As an RCMP firearms specialist confirmed in court Thursday, Arcand's weapon was an "improvised device" — or pipe gun, as defence attorney Brent Little called it.

Specialist Elissia Hillier said that Arcand's weapon met the criminal code definition of a firearm because it had been altered to allow a bullet to be shot from it.

Arcand in fact had two pipes that day. When slammed together — the smaller tube inserted into the longer tube — the pipes produced a shot, said Hillier.

Civilian witnesses described Arcand doing something like that during the standoff.

"It was kind of like a pump action," testified Carol Parenteau, who witnessed the scene from a bank across the street.

"Like he was pumping it together," echoed her co-worker, Karen Burkosky.

One of the pipes recovered from the scene still had a shotgun shell in it, said Hillier.

Police also found a fired shotgun shell on the ground, while five 12-gauge shotgun shells were found in the clothing police seized from Arcand.

'Reacting in a frightened manner'

Arcand, who is from Edmonton, is expected to take the stand at some point during the trial.

Dressed in plaid sweaters, Arcand has taken notes on a yellow legal pad during the trial, often asking to confer with Little during the lawyer's cross-examination of Crown witnesses.

"He seemed to be reacting in a frightened manner," another civilian witness, Matthew Hutchings, said of Arcand's behaviour during the standoff.

Little asked one of the officers involved if Arcand appeared "scared or nervous" that day.

"He appeared very paranoid," said Const. Michael Armbruster, while disagreeing with Little's suggestion that Arcand was "scared."

"If he was scared, he would have followed commands," said Armbruster.

Drugs in Arcand's system

Linklater testified Thursday that the first Taser shot merely caused Arcand to flinch.

According to hospital records submitted in court, Arcand's urine tested positive for amphetamines and methamphetamines the day of his confrontation with police.

Police caught Arcand around the block. He was shot in the shoulder and treated at the hospital. 

The altercation lasted only minutes, court heard. 

The judge-only trial, which began Monday, continues Friday.