Trial Opens for Violent Daytime Home Invasion
Three Windsor men are standing trial for a violent daytime 2025 home invasion at an elderly couple’s Walkerville residence that left one homeowner injured. At the trial’s opening on Tuesday, prosecutors alleged Bryan Burleigh and Lester Markham, then 35 and 38, brandished a firearm at the home’s two residents during the robbery on Feb. 22, 2025, before fleeing with getaway driver Robert Brown.
The home invasion in “broad daylight” left the 79-year-old man with injuries to the head, assistant Crown attorney Lerren Ducharme told Ontario Court Justice Gregory McGivern. The robbers stole a 60-year-old woman’s purse, a phone and a tablet, the Crown said.
Charges and Evidence
Burleigh and Markham stand charged with eight and 10 counts, respectively, of armed robbery and illegal firearm possession offences, while Brown is charged with two counts of armed robbery. In the Crown’s opening statement, Ducharme said video surveillance will show a white SUV driven by Brown dropping off Burleigh and Markham near the front of the residence in the 1600 block of Elsmere Avenue and the two masked men entering it around 12:40 p.m. on Feb. 22.
The Crown said surveillance footage will show Burleigh and Markham fleeing the residence around a minute later and running down an alleyway between Elsmere and Marentette avenues before entering a nearby Rogers store on Tecumseh Road East minutes later. Surveillance footage in the store helped Windsor police identify the two men, who by then were no longer wearing their masks, Ducharme said.
Getaway Vehicle and Discovery
Prosecutors allege the same white SUV that dropped Burleigh and Markham off on Elsmere picked them up in the Rogers store parking lot around ten minutes later, at approximately 12:50 p.m. The Crown’s first witness, a sales assistant working at the Rogers store on Tecumseh on Feb. 22 said two men entered the store and asked if they could use his cellphone to call a cab. When a call to a taxicab went unanswered, “they asked me to then call their friend, which he did not answer and then as I proceeded to call a cab again, they just left the store,” Rogers employee Ahmad Beydoun testified.
Beydoun said he received a voicemail from the two men’s friend minutes after they had left. The Crown said the call was a pocket dial from Brown that resulted in an “inadvertent voicemail” capturing a conversation between Brown, Burleigh and Markham as the two men were being picked up by the white SUV in the Rogers parking lot.
Physical Evidence
Police found black balaclavas in the white SUV when they seized and searched the vehicle later that day, Ducharme said during the Crown’s opening. Police also recovered a loaded black Glock handgun and two sets of gloves that the suspects were seen wearing in an alley behind the Elsmere address, she said. The trial continues.
