Jayesh Prajapati was run over by an SUV and dragged for 78 metres while trying to stop the driver from stealing over $112 in gas, a jury heard Tuesday as Crown attorneys made their opening statements in the trial of the man accused of killing the gas station attendant.Max Tutiven is charged with second-degree murder in connection with Prajapati’s 2012 death outside a Shell station in North York.“The Crown’s theory is that either Mr. Tutiven saw Mr. Prajapati in the path of his travel and intentionally drove at, and struck, Mr. Prajapati with his vehicle and, rather than stopping, chose to keep driving,” Crown prosecutor Jenny Rodopoulos told the jury.“Or, even if Mr. Tutiven did not intentionally drive at Mr. Prajapati, after striking Mr. Prajapati with his vehicle, Mr. Tutiven chose not to stop and continued driving knowing that he was dragging Mr. Prajapati underneath his vehicle.”Tutiven stole gas six times in the same SUV in the year prior to Prajapati’s death, Rodopoulos said.None of the Crown’s allegations against Tutiven have been proven in court. Tutiven has pleaded not guilty.Though several eyewitnesses at the gas station and in apartments across the street saw or heard the SUV drag Prajapati, none could identify the driver, Rodopoulos said.In security video presented to the court by Toronto Det. Robert North, the Crown`s first witness, a stocky man with short dark hair and a beard can be seen pulling up to the gas station in a silver SUV and filling the vehicle and two jerry cans before driving away without paying.North and the Crown allege Tutiven is the man in the video.It will be up to the jury to determine “beyond a reasonable doubt” whether Tutiven was the driver of the SUV that killed Prajapati, and whether his actions behind the wheel constituted second-degree murder, Rodopoulos said.For a murder to be “second-degree,” the perpetrator must have intended to kill t ...
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