A timeline of what the Sarnia murder trial jury heard ahead of closing arguments

Closing arguments in a joint Sarnia murder trial were pushed from Thursday to Friday.

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With the month-long trial nearing its end, here’s an updated timeline of the evidence the jury heard from a taped police interview and 16 witnesses, including one of the accused, although they have the right to reject any testimony they hear.

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Noah Brown, 31, and Joshua Tomlinson, 38, have both pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and breaking and entering the death of Allen Schairer, 62, who was found in the bathtub of his Devine Street home stabbed to death on Jan. 26, 2021. Tomlinson chose to testify in his own defense while Brown did not.

JAN. 25, 2021

10:30-11 p.m.

Tomlinson, who has a long criminal record of breaking and entering, leaves his girlfriend’s Kathleen Avenue home and walks to Exmouth Street looking for businesses to break into to get money for drugs, he testified.

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JAN. 26, 2021

Just after midnight, according to Brown’s police interview

Brown is in Tecumseh Park, across the street from Schairer’s house, when Tomlinson comes out, hands him a knife and tells him to get rid of it, Brown tells police after his arrest. He tosses the knife in a bush on Devine Street near Marshall Gowland Manor.

Around the same time, according to Tomlinson

Tomlinson, who says he was never in Schairer’s home and knew nothing of a break-in or who killed him, returns to Kathleen Avenue cold, wet, tired, and empty handed. Just before he gets home, Brown pulls up in a car, gets out, cuts his hand, and bullies him into helping fence stolen property stashed in the car. They stop at two mutual friends’ houses, Kebrina Kerrigan and Sheena Bates.

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Around the same time, according to other witnesses

Brown and Tomlinson load a TV, stereo system, tools, and a camera into a car parked in Schairer’s garage. The goods are driven to Bates’ home, a townhouse on Kathleen Avenue where Brown has been staying sporadically after his girlfriend kicked him out. Bates gets in the car with Brown and they follow her boyfriend, Dylon Wagner, and Tomlinson in Wagner’s car. Bates becomes irate after learning the car was stolen and a person was stabbed and demands out. The car is abandoned in Aamjiwnaang First Nation.

5:30 a.m.

Tomlinson’s girlfriend, Surie Landry-Caudle, gets a message from an account she doesn’t know with a message claiming it’s Tomlinson and saying he’ll be home at 6 am after playing poker at a friend’s house all night. Tomlinson, who recently finished serving a two-year jail sentence, is supposed to be home every night on a court-ordered prison sentence.

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12:30 p.m.

OPP Det.-Const. Rob Carruthers is at the Sarnia courthouse when he hears about an abandoned car in a field on Lasalle Line near Scott Road. Carruthers heads there and sees two sets of footprints in the snow near a 2012 Hyundai Elantra. Believing it’s stolen, he heads to Schairer’s home after learning he is the owner.

2-2:30 p.m.

Carruthers and Sarnia Police Const. Brad Brooker discovers Schairer’s bloody, lifeless body in his bathtub. The longtime bachelor and retired city parks staffer likely died within minutes of being stabbed based on his wounds, according to the forensic pathologist.

3 p.m.

Tomlinson arrives home wearing new clothes and with a cut on his left hand. He tells Landry-Caudle the cut is from a putty spatula. He also has a Walmart receipt for some of the new clothing. He seems stressed, but doesn’t appear high or going through withdrawal despite battling a fentanyl addiction, Landry-Caudle recalls.

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3:30 p.m.

Sarnia police forensic investigators Aaron Johnston and Daun-Mari Price arrive at Schairer’s home. Along with blood in the bathroom, investigators find a blood stain on a storage tote sitting on Schairer’s bed and another stain on a kitchen cupboard. They also see a dust footwear impression in the kitchen and notice a knife is missing from a knife block. They call in Patrick Mark Lancaster, a blood stain pattern analyst with the OPP, to help with the probe.

9 p.m.

Jessica Hales, Brown’s on-and-off partner of several years, lets him in her Devine Street apartment. Brown, a fentanyl and crystal meth user, seems tired and not himself as he goes through a camera backpack with expensive equipment inside. He goes white and looks like he’s going to pass out when he overhears Hales’ friend ask her if she’d heard about the murder on Devine Street. Brown tells her that’s where the camera came from and he was in the basement when Tomlinson stabbed the guy, Hales recalls. Brown adds he got rid of the knife and assures her his fingerprints won’t be on it.

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JAN. 27, 2021

Early morning hours

Bates says Brown circles her with a knife and threatens her to stay quiet while at Kerrigan’s house and gives her a black eye, but she refuses to cooperate with police.

12:16 p.m.

Tomlinson cashes his Ontario Disability Support Program check at Money Mart in Sarnia and receives $1,062. He takes a taxi to Walmart and buys new clothes and a cellphone.

Later that day

Hales gives a statement to police. Her apartment is later searched and police sixteen a pair of Brown’s shoes with apparent blood stains and shoe polish or paint on them.

9 p.m.

Tomlinson is arrested at Milk Marc Variety. He sobs and denies doing anything during the booking-in process at headquarters, but stays silent during his police interview. He is also questioned – and later charged – about a second, separate fatal stabbing of a Sarnia senior three days before Schairer died.

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JAN. 28, 2021

Noo

Landry-Caudle gives a statement to police and hands over a pair of Tomlinson’s jeans she noticed had red stains on them, as well as a Bose speaker.

2:30 p.m.

Brown is arrested at a Lillian Street home. It’s later searched and police seize a camera bag.

7:30 p.m.

Det. Const. Tyler Callander interviews Brown at headquarters. Brown provides plenty of information, but denies being in Schairer’s house.

9:30-11 p.m.

Callander and Brown drive to various sites to confirm his story, including by the hedge into which he says he tossed the knife. Johnston later recovers it and testing reveals DNA from Brown, Tomlinson and Schairer can’t be excluded from blood found on it.

JAN. 29, 2021

6:45 a.m.

Callander interviews Brown again and confronts him saying he knows he was in Schairer’s house. Brown gets upset and denies this.

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1:30 p.m.

Police search the Kathleen Avenue home of Tomlinson and his girlfriend and sixteen several items.

JAN. 31, 2021

Bates gives a statement to police.

LIST OF WITNESSES

• Bryan Schairer (Schairer’s brother)
• OPP Det.-Const. Rob Carruthers
• Jessica Hales
• Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Shkrum
• Surie Landry-Caudle
• Sheena Bates
• Sarnia Police Const. Brad Brooker
• Sarnia Police Sgt. Daun-Mari Price
• Sarnia police Det. Const. Tyler Callander (also a tape of Callander interviewing Brown)
• Sarnia Police Sgt. Aaron Johnston
• Center of Forensic Sciences biologist Sobia Malik
• OPP blood stain pattern analyst Patrick Mark Lancaster
• Sarnia Police Const. Alex Ross
• Sarnia police Det.-Const. Carly Warner
• Joshua Tomlinson

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@ObserverTerry

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