‘There was a hole in my shoe’: American tourist testifies at trial of Essex County men

Victim takes the stand in the trial of a downtown shooting. Michelle Maluske reports.

An American tourist testifies at the trial of two Essex County men.

Silbert Caron, 26, and Ezechiel Thompson, 23, have pleaded not guilty to several charges including discharging a firearm and assault for a non-fatal shooting in 2023.

In the early morning hours of May 13, the victim tried to stop a fight outside of an Ouellette Avenue nightclub.

The fight was captured by an unknown witness on their cellphone; the 1:07 video was shown repeatedly to the jury Wednesday.

The crown went through it nearly frame by frame to identify the people involved in the fight, and the shooting that followed it.

The victim says a female friend asked him to help her boyfriend, who was being hit by at least two people unknown to him.

The jury could see the victim intervene on the fight, take some swings himself before “body slamming” one person to the ground.

A white limousine can be seen in the video, parked on Ouellette Avenue.

As the video swings around, the victim is seen in an exchange of words with a new person.

“He was talking about a gun,” the victim testified Wednesday. “He just kept saying he would shoot me in the head.”

In separate surveillance video shown to the jury - from two separate angles – the victim is seen walking away from the fight before the shooter skips towards him.

Another brief interaction ensues before the victim says he was struck in the head with a handgun.

“I just had my hands up,” the victim testified. “I heard a gunshot and then I realized it hit me.”

In the video, there are at least two other people nearby – including the victims’ girlfriend and the other co-accused - when the victim was shot in the left foot.

He told the jury he “took cover” in a nearby doorway.

“I just saw a wound. Blood. There was a hole in my shoe,” he testified.

That’s when the video shows another person approach the victim and it appears he kicked the victim while he lay on the ground.

“He just waited to hit me while I was down,” the victim told the jury.

The victim said a security guard from a nearby nightclub – not the one he had attended – raced over to help.

Paramedics responded, bandaged the victim and took him to the ER.

However, because he is American, the victim said “there wasn’t much” local nurses could do for him, other than bandages and pain medication.

He drove himself and his girlfriend home after sunrise that day and he went straight to a Detroit hospital to recover from his survivable injury.

It did take two skin graft procedures, the victim told the court, because his foot did not heal properly.