Homicide victim Troy Gold.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/RCMP

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Four men have pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and another accused was acquitted, in connection with the death of a Kamloops drug dealer whose skeletal remains were found in the Lac Du Bois Grasslands weeks after his disappearance in October 2018.

On Oct. 30, 2018, police recovered the body of Troy Gold, 35, who had been missing since Oct. 1. A year later, the Crown charged five men, who are also involved in the Kamloops drug trade, in connection to his murder.

Nathan Townsend, Jayden Eustache, Darian Rohel, John Daviss and Sean Scurt were each initially charged with second-degree murder, but the charges were all eventually reduced to manslaughter for the beating that led to Gold’s death.

Townsend, Eustache, Rohel and Scurt pleaded guilty to the charge of manslaughter, while Daviss, the lone person to stand trial, was acquitted last fall. Justice Dev Dley determined the Crown had not established beyond a reasonable doubt that Daviss was more than a bystander at the scene of the crime.

A publication ban had been in effect to protect the integrity of an impending jury trial for Eustache, who was facing a second-degree murder charge, laying, but that ban was lifted after he entered a guilty plea to manslaughter in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops on Wednesday, (Jan. 26). He was the last of the accused to do so.?

Baseball bat attacked led to death

In an agreed statements of facts, court heard Townsend, a local drug dealer, orchestrated the beating of Gold, who Townsend suspected was involved in recent arsons on his two vehicles. Gold also owed Townsend money.

On the morning of Aug. 19, 2018 — less than two months before Gold vanished — Townsend’s BMW was found engulfed in flames in Brocklehurst. Firefighters and police responded, finding a trail of accelerant leading from the vehicle to a point along Popp Street. On Sept. 29, 2018, Townsend’s newly purchased Mercedes was also burned, with one RCMP investigator finding a can of gasoline in the back seat. 

An angered Townsend sought retribution and recruited Eustache and Rohel to form a group to carry out the attack on Gold, telling them to also “get digits” by cutting off one of Gold’s fingers. The two men, in turn, added Daviss and Scurt to their group, court heard. 

They borrowed a truck and planned to pick up Gold at his home under the guise they were all going to render a beating on someone else. Scurt, the driver and Gold’s friend, was also led to believe the target was another person.

On Oct. 1, 2018, Rohel, Eustache and Daviss met Scurt at Northills Centre before picking up Gold at his home at about 4 p.m. The six then drove out to the Lac Du Bois Grasslands, north of Batchelor Heights, to an area near a corral off a dirt road, with no houses or sources of light nearby.

“During the trip to the grasslands, Mr. Gold became concerned that he was, in fact, the target of the intended beating,” Crown prosecutor Sarah Firestone told court.

Once at the corral, Eustache offered Gold a cigarette as a means of distracting him and putting him at ease before launching a surprise attack, striking him in the head with an aluminium baseball bat just as the cigarette was being lit.

Eustache repeatedly struck Gold in the head, legs, arms and body and was the only one of the five men to use a weapon in the attack, Firestone said.

Rohel, Daviss and Scurt also took part in the beating, hitting, kicking and restraining Gold, court heard. Bolt cutters were used to sever one of Gold’s fingers, which was then placed in a black sunglasses bag.

Eustache threatened Scurt with violence if he refused to participate, stating “hit him or you’re getting hit” and directed the group to take Gold’s finger and shoes, Firestone told the court. Scurt kicked Gold more than once and held him as the others rained down blows on their victim.

Gold, moaning and incapacitated, also had his pants removed and was left at the spot where the beating took place, but was still alive when the group left.

Gold's remains eaten by animals

Shortly after 5 p.m., the group returned to Townsend’s home, where Eustache and Rohel gave him an account of the beating of Gold.

Rohel and Daviss — lower-level drug users and dealers in Kamloops who bought drugs from Townsend, to whom they owed money — were subsequently informed by Townsend they could take $500 and $250, respectfully, off the the drug debts they owed him as payments for the beating.

Rohel sought drugs from Townsend to compensate Scurt, who is a drug user and not a dealer.

Some members of the group disposed of their clothes, stained during the beating, in a garbage bag that was then placed in a box and given to Scurt, who left it in a dumpster, unaware it contained evidence, court heard. Scurt did not put his clothing in the box.

Eustache changed clothes at Townsend’s home, placing what he was wearing in the garbage bag, before being driven to Aberdeen Mall, where he purchased new items. He then went to dinner with Townsend and others at the downtown Boston Pizza restaurant, describing while en route that Gold acted like a “little bitch” as he had his finger severed.

Scurt did not make an attempt to check on Gold and, a couple of weeks following the attack, confessed his role in the attack to police.

Gold failed to return home on Oct. 1 and was reported missing two days later to the RCMP, which soon began searching the Lac Du Bois area.

On Oct. 7, at the corral, Mounties found a partially smoked cigarette that was tested and found to contain Gold’s DNA. In that same area, police found foliage stained with his blood. 

On Oct. 30, an officer found partial skeletal remains approximately 800 metres from the corral in Lac Du Bois. The remains were identified as Gold through DNA testing and an autopsy confirmed his cause of death was blunt force head trauma, with animal scavenging.

Police would also end up finding the bat used in the attack, which also had Gold’s DNA on it, after searching the truck used to get to the corral.

About a year later, in October 2019, RCMP arrested Townsend, Eustache, Rohel, Daviss and Scurt.?

Guilty pleas trickled in over months

Rohel was the first to plead guilty, which he did last summer. He was handed a seven-year sentence for the crime and was already serving 3.5 years in prison following separate, unrelated drug convictions. 

Townsend pleaded guilty this past December and is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for manslaughter and a conviction of obstruction of justice while behind bars.

Justice Dley sentenced Townsend to six years and three months in jail for the manslaughter and another six months consecutively for the obstruction charge, which related to his attempt to have a witness not testify at his pending trial (which ultimately did not take place as he pleaded guilty).

While he wasn’t present for the assault, Townsend pleaded guilty to manslaughter for organizing the beating that led to Gold’s death.

When factoring in his time served, credited as 1.5 days for each day in pre-trial custody, Townsend has approximately three years left to serve.

Scurt was sentenced to four years in prison and, with time served, has about nine months left to serve, following a joint submission that was accepted by Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick in December. During that hearing, both Crown prosecutor Andrew Duncan and defence counsel Jim Heller stressed leniency as Scurt was forced into participating in the attack.

Scurt, court heard, was remorseful for contributing to his friend’s death, but he helped cut off one of Gold’s fingers and removed his pants, and had been content with assaulting another person.

Eustache is currently in custody, but had been released for most of 2021, though he had been in custody since his arrest in October 2019 prior to that. A date will be fixed for his sentencing on April 25.

?Victim had violent criminal past

Gold has a lengthy criminal history, including a manslaughter conviction in connection with a stabbing death on a Kelowna beach in 2001.

According to a Kelowna Daily Courier story, Gold was 19 when he attacked 32-year-old Martin Cotey with a knife after approaching Cotey and his girlfriend on Okanagan Lake beach in the early-morning hours of of Aug. 7, 2001.

“Armed with a carving knife and spoiling for a fight, Gold told Cotey to get off his beach,” the Courier story stated. “Cotey, 32, tried to appease him and Gold stabbed him, leaving him to die. A pathologist said he would have bled to death if he hadn’t drowned first.”

Gold was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In April 2015, Gold was sentenced to almost two years in prison after pleading guilty to robbing a Kelowna bank. In 2012, he served six months behind bars in connection with a robbery in Victoria, while also compiling assault and theft convictions in Sydney.

Gold’s murder was the first in a series of deadly gang-related incidents in Kamloops over a violent five-month stretch that saw four people killed and a number of others injured in the wake of the murder of Red Scorpions gang co-founder Konaam Shirzad on Sept. 21, 2017.

That case remains unsolved.

— This story was originally published by Kamloops This Week.

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