Saskatoon sexual assault case stayed due to six-year delay

A sexual assault case in Saskatoon has been stayed after a delay of almost six years led to a Charter issue.

Back in April of 2018, a complaint was made to Saskatoon police about a sexual assault allegedly committed by Cary Harold Reid.

Police began investigating, but in a bizarre series of events the first investigator was deployed to work in the Middle East, leading the case to be reassigned. Then, in 2020, the second and third investigators assigned to the file both died after short illnesses.

Court documents detail attempts made by police to find Reid in the ensuing years – trying phone numbers, looking at former addresses and inquiring at a former place of work.

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But Reid told court he’d posted multiple times on his publicly accessible social media pages about moving to Regina for work.

Saskatoon police only looked to the Queen City after a victim services worker reached out to police for a second time to check up on the case and told them the alleged victim believed Reid was living in Regina.

After that call, it only took a special constable 22 minutes to find Reid’s new address in Regina.

Regina police arrested Reid in February of 2023. According to Reid, that was when he first learned there was a charge against him.

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada established that a person has a Charter right to have criminal charges dealt with within 30 months, though the math can change depending on the cause of delays.

In Reid’s case, Justice D.C. Chow determined the clock started when the information was first sworn back in 2018. He found the delay added up to 68 months.

Chow said he was not persuaded the efforts during the investigation were at all reasonable.

“The uncontroverted evidence in the within application confirms that investigators made little, if any effort to locate and arrest Mr. Reid once the warrant had issued,” read Chow’s decision.

Reid’s trial on the sexual assault charge was scheduled to begin next week, but because the delay was more than twice what would be allowed, Chow stayed the charge.