Justice Harrison Arrell will deliver his decision in June in the Ontario Superior Court trial of two Hamilton paramedics who are accused of not properly caring for a dying teenager.

Steven Snively, 55, and Christopher Marchant, 32, have pleaded not guilty to the charge of failing to provide Yosif Al-Hasnawi, a 19-year-old gunshot victim, with the necessaries of life.

The Crown says the paramedics ignored their training and provincial standards on Dec. 2, 2017 when Al-Hasnawi was shot with a .22-calibre handgun, and called the medical care they provided "grossly negligent."

The teenager was pronounced dead in hospital about an hour after he was shot.

"Their failures robbed Yosif Al-Hasnawi of his only chance to survive," said Crown Linda Shin during closing arguments on Thursday.

But the defence says both paramedics thought Al-Hasnawi had been shot with a BB or pellet gun. They argued the pair were led astray by unconscious biases that night, and instead thought the problem was a psychiatric emergency.

Michael DelGobbo, defence attorney for Snively, said the judge might find the paramedics could have acted faster or done things better, but that didn't mean they were criminally responsible.

"The criminal law does not criminalize mistakes," he said.

Justice Arrell will give his verdict on June 8, 2021.

The judge-alone trial started in November 2020. Witnesses have included firefighters, police officers, emergency room physicians, bystanders, and Al-Hasnawi's family members, among others.

Some testified that they heard the paramedics laughing at the scene, saying the victim could win an Oscar for pretending. Some first responders said they didn't hear anything. Other witnesses heard laughing from the crowd around Al-Hasnawi or thought a Hamilton police officer had made the comment.

It prompted the Crown to ask the judge to reject parts of Const. Michael Zezella's evidence, claiming "he wanted to minimize his own improper, subjective views of Yosif's faking" and portray himself in a better light.

But DelGobbo questioned the evidence given by friends and family members. While the defence wasn't suggesting it was "concocted," he said, it might not be as reliable because of the emotion involved. He also pointed out gaps in people's memories.

"There's always an escapable feeling to blame someone when there's a loss of a friend, look for answers that maybe aren't readily available," he said. "And clearly they blame the paramedics for the loss of Yosif and that may impact their evidence, and that's a natural and understandable feeling. But it makes it difficult for you to rely on their evidence."

Both paramedics testified in their own defence in the trial.

Snively told the court that he couldn't sleep after Al-Hasnawi died on his watch, and Marchant said that he felt partly responsible for his death, but doesn't blame himself.

The Crown said their testimony shifted depended on the questions they were asked. The Crown also says their paperwork from that night was fabricated to their benefit, though the defence disagrees.

"Their testimony was false, misleading, and riddled with lies," Shin said of the paramedics. "They were inconsistent with other witnesses. They were inconsistent with each other."

It took paramedics 23 minutes to leave for St. Joseph's Hospital, the court heard, from the site of the shooting at Main and Sanford in Hamilton's lower city.

The court also heard patients with penetrating wounds should go to Hamilton General Hospital, but the paramedics had ruled that issue out.

While a wound might appear innocuous, the Crown said, paramedics are trained and local policies are clear that all penetrating injuries to the abdomen should be treated seriously.

The Crown said by not bringing equipment to Al-Hasnawi's side as he lay injured on the sidewalk, it showed the paramedics weren't treating it serious from the start. Their conduct throughout the call, Shin said, was a marked departure from what a reasonable paramedic would do.

"The fact that biases were at play, in my submission, does not give the defendants a free pass to ignore all the training and standards applicable to them," Shin said.

Crown attorneys are Scott Patterson and Linda Shin.

Jeffrey Manishen of Hamilton represents Marchant and Michael DelGobbo represents Snively.

The person who shot Al-Hasnawi, Dale King, was acquitted last year of second-degree murder. That case is being appealed.