RECAP | Bar dancing, drinking video seen at ex-world junior hockey players’ trial before early recess

Hi readers.

We’re wrapping up our live coverage of today’s events as court ended early — again.

Scroll down to get caught up on what happened today.

We’ll be back in the morning with more updates for you.

As well, we appreciate this topic may be difficult. There are support services available.

If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. ​​

The judge has just sent the jury home for the day because it’s so hot in the courtroom that the heat is melting one of the machines.

This is preventing the Crown from being able to show the video evidence without the technology heating up to the point where it shuts down.

“For the second day in a row, we’re adjourning early. We will start fresh tomorrow,” Carroccia tells the jury.

This has been a day plagued by tech issues. Earlier, there was a problem with the government of Ontario internet system, which IT people were able to fix.

A technician is supposed to come today at 4:30 p.m. to fix the problem with the heat in the courtroom, and that’ll hopefully fix the overheating machine problem (and IT people will also be here to make sure it works again).

Court will be back at 10 a.m. tomorrow and we are expected to continue hearing from Waque.

Courtroom sweltering.

Meanwhile, outside in London, there’s a severe thunderstorm watch from Environment Canada.

It got really windy over lunch and ominous clouds covered the sun.

Environment Canada says there’s a risk of a tornado, hail up to 4 cm and wind gusts up to 110 km/h early afternoon into early this evening.

We’re back after some more technical issues and hopefully things are working now.

The London police detective is back in the witness box.

A video is shown in black and white of the very crowded Jack’s bar dance floor, taken sometime between 1 a.m. and 1:20 a.m.

There are strobe lights and a crowd of people dancing to music we cannot hear. There’s a red circle that the Crown added to the video. Inside the circle we’re told E.M. is dancing with McLeod.

And … more technical issues. The screen showing the dance floor goes black. The court staff are going to try an old standby: turning the system off and then back on.

Court is starting to come back after a lunch break.

We're just waiting for the judge and then more live updates should be coming soon as the afternoon session kicks off.

The Crown’s video stopped working, so court is on a longer recess for lunch for IT to come in and fix things (again).

Court’s scheduled to resume at 2 p.m. ET (unless the tech issues take longer to resolve).

We’re just on a short break now. The courtroom is especially sweltering today, maybe because of the extra bodies in here because the overflow room was closed (it’s now reopened, we’re hearing).

The detective will continue showing video and photo evidence after the break.

Side note: The music in the videos taken by the players is the subject of chatter for those of us who don’t know the songs that were popular in 2018. Those videos are the only ones we have sound on. Some younger reporters are helping us to decipher the music.

Besides Kid Cudi, we’ve also heard Mr. Brightside by the Killers and Yeah 3x by Chris Brown. Shoutout to Ariella Garmaise from The Walrus for figuring those out.

Some of the players at Jack’s bar that night took videos on their phones, and we are seeing some of them.

In one 16-minute clip taken on Batherson’s phone, Batherson, McLeod, Foote and Maxime Comtois (a former NHLer) are seen whooping, jumping up and down, and generally having a good time while singing along to the song Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi.

The jury was also shown a still photo from Jack’s social media, including McLeod, Batherson and Howden. E.M. can be seen just out of the frame.

Another video, showing the dance floor and taken on McLeod’s phone, has music thumping and several players in the shot, including Jake Bean on Maccarone’s shoulders.

The jury just watched a video of E.M. at a smaller bar within Jack’s where she’s seen speaking to McLeod. The two are chatting for the video, with McLeod casually leaning with his arm on the bar counter and E.M. with her back against it.

They order drinks: E.M. does two shots and McLeod does one shot. He’s also holding a drink.

There’s also a 13-second video being shown that Waque says came from Drake Batherson’s phone (he currently plays for the Ottawa Senators and is on the list for possible witnesses at this trial).

The clip shows a super crowded dance floor and there’s sound. It was taken sometime between midnight and 2:30 a.m. on June 19, 2018. It was hard for cops to determine the exact time because some of the players’ phones were from different time zones.

The dancing video shows the following people smiling at the camera: Jake Bean, Foote, Batherson, Brett Howden and Cale Makar.

In another video, Tyler Steenbergen is shown at the bar, as well as Matt Maccarone, who Waque says was not on the team but was out with them that night.

We’re back and the detective is back in the witness box.

The first video we saw today was of E.M. at an ATM toward the back of the bar. We’d previously seen a video of the same thing but from a different angle.

We’re also shown a video from a smaller bar within Jack’s.

“That is Brett Howden,” Waque explains as a man talks to E.M. (He is now a centre with the Las Vegas Golden Nights).

Howden leaves the small bar area and soon, he returns with McLeod. McLeod starts speaking to E.M. Howden and McLeod are both in baseball caps worn backwards in the video.

When the videos play in court, the accused men watch them on the screens set up at each defence table. All the players are once again wearing dark suits except Hart, who is in his burgundy suit (yesterday, he wore a light grey one).

Again, there’s no sound on the videos, and it’s pretty hushed in the courtroom as everyone watches the screens. The ones we’ve been watching today were taken between 11:40 p.m. and midnight.