SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Repeat sex offender Bobby Zoe is expected to hear a decision today in a case stemming from an Old Town home invasion and sexual assault in 2015.

Bobby Zoe, who is on trial for a break-in and sexual assault at an Old Town home in February 2015, is led out of territorial court Monday afternoon. - Walter Strong/NNSL photo

Testifying for a territorial court in November, the victim - whose name is protected by a publication ban - said she awoke in the early hours of Feb. 15 to find a man wearing a scarf and backpack standing beside her bed who was touching her vagina through her flannel pajama pants.

The suspect ran away after the woman screamed, which alerted her partner sleeping next to her who gave chase and scuffled with the suspect in the apartment stairwell. The backpack, allegedly belonging to Zoe, was left behind.

Zoe, a 35-year-old man with at least three sexual assault-related convictions on his criminal record heading into the trial, faces three charges - break-in and sexual assault, break-in and theft and one charge of breaching probation.

The case resumed Monday after a two-month break in the trial by judge alone. Zoe took the stand in his own defence Monday where he testified it was not him who left the backpack behind but someone else who stole it earlier in the evening.

Crown prosecutor Jeannie Scott told court on Tuesday that Zoe was convicted of forgery in 2001 and thus should not be trusted to give an honest recounting of the events.

"His testimony didn't make sense," she said.

Zoe's lawyer Paul Falvo said his client hid his backpack that night because it contained alcohol and he intended to visit a bar. He said Zoe left the bag - which contained "all his worldly possessions" - near the baseball diamond at Fritz Theil Park. Falvo said Zoe then attended a party and didn't have the backpack with him.

But one of Zoe's close friends - Lawrence Tailbone - testified he was with Zoe at the party and saw the backpack firmly on his back when he left the premises around 2 a.m.

"Mr. Tailbone has no reason to lie," she said. "He's a friend of Mr. Zoe."

The victim's partner positively identified Zoe as the intruder, Scott told the court in her closing statement.

"He said he was 100 per cent positive that was the man he had struggled with," she said.

Falvo said Zoe should have been presented to the woman and her partner in a police lineup rather than while he was sitting cuffed in the back of a police cruiser.

He said circumstances surrounding his identification didn't break the law but doesn't satisfy guidelines that recommend a lineup of 10 people.

Falvo said Zoe was walking toward the Old Town apartment when he was picked up, which doesn't make sense if he was the intruder. But Scott said police responding to the Old Town home invasion saw Zoe walking up Franklin Avenue toward downtown and he was arrested about nine minutes later. She said officers saw that he appeared to notice them and stop walking as they drove past. Noticing he fit the description of the suspect, they reported his whereabouts to another officer who arrested him moments later.

She said officers found $460 in cash on Zoe and seized what they believed to be $285 stolen from the Old Town apartment.

Judge R.J. McIntosh said the Crown's case would be more compelling if Zoe was only carrying the amount stolen from the Old Town home.

"The Crown's argument would be a lot more compelling if he just had the amount stolen," he said.

Zoe testified to having seen another man wearing a red jacket like the one he was wearing near the entrance of a hotel on Franklin Avenue before he was arrested.

Scott said Zoe's suggestion that another man wearing a red jacket was in the vicinity appears to be self-serving testimony. She said police returned to the scene after he made his claim to see if it was even possible to see inside the door of the hotel from where he claimed to have been standing.

She said it would have been difficult to do so, especially considering the fact that the path Zoe claimed to have taken from the park back downtown doesn't offer a view of the hotel at all.

Zoe was convicted in 2012 of a brutal sex assault on a 23-year-old woman who was walking alone on 53 Street in January 2011. He was sentenced to 39 months in jail with time served awaiting trial and was released early for good behaviour having served less than 18 months of his sentence. He was subsequently convicted in 2014 and sentenced to 21 months in jail for a break-in at another occupied home in Old Town the previous fall.

McIntosh said he would deliver his decision today.

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