Man found not guilty in connection with UBC sex assault
Posted May 8, 2018 10:25 am.
Last Updated May 8, 2018 12:52 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Despite calling the accused’s story “unusual,” a judge has found one of two men accused of sexually assaulting three women at UBC in April 2016 not guilty.
The Crown has been told it didn’t prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yuan Zhi Gao was arrested on the patio of an apartment at UBC’s campus, while his friend David Tucker was inside, sexually assaulting three women.
The Crown claimed Gao was acting as a lookout, but his lawyer claims Tucker was trying to frame his client.
“I believe — and Mr. Gao obviously believes, too — that it was a setup. The other thing is at some point, Mr. Gao said in the trial, ‘I tried when he came out [to] grab him by the arm, I tried to arrest him,'” says Gao’s lawyer, Gary Botting.
“When he heard the scream and when they came out, that’s when he grabbed him. He tried to say, ‘Come on, let’s go,'” says Botting.
Tucker committed suicide at the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre in July, 2016.
