Falsely Accused

hello and thank you for joining us on it is written canada when i think of the words falsely accused i think of two men in the bible joseph who was falsely accused by potiphar's wife in egypt and jesus who was falsely accused of being a blasphemer and a law breaker both were innocent but both were convicted of crimes they did not commit and were sent to jail both their stories speak to the reality of how the human justice system can be very unjust similarly our guests today are aaron and zachary simmons who on one fateful day in february 2020 were on their way to visit their brother in toronto they had just left their parents house and all of a sudden they were confronted with a swarm of police cars coming out of nowhere guns were aimed at them and they faced charges of second-degree murder in a moment we will hear their story i just kept asking god what happened what went wrong one wrong move that's the end of it somebody made a very big mistake here not those boys god's always been able before why not now [Music] so aaron and zach this is amazing that you are uh willing to talk about this we really just want to get into your mind what was it like right so thank you for being here thank you for having us so erin i'm going to start with you can you take us back to their tuesday afternoon and share with us what happened me and zach were on our way back to toronto for the week we were both working out there um we left a little bit later than we usually do we were driving and we'd forgotten stuff it's a almost look like a family tree we forget a lot of things so we went back home and then we were on the road again i didn't get to the highway yet i was on the 115 about like 10 10 15 minutes away when i pass and exit and i see a cough car and i'm like oh man i hope i'm not speeding i'm looking at my speedometer i'm like oh no i'm fine and then i see this this suv speeding up quickly behind us as it gets closer like oh okay that's the that's the cop that's the opp officer so maybe he's he's going somewhere maybe i was speeding i have no idea so i just stay in my lane until he's right behind me he's really close behind me but no lights were going off and my exit was coming up so i i went into the next lane he pulled up slightly beside me and then his lights then he turned on his lights and we started pulling over but because we had just gone off to our exit we pulled off to the side and he was driving weird behind us i mean obviously at that point you're not thinking too much about how like an officer is doing what he does so we're just waiting there for for our ticket or whatever we're gonna get when i hear over his loudspeaker uh roll down your windows so i slightly i turn my head and i look back and i see him in the middle of the exit with his gun drawn so i roll down my window and he proceeds to ask us to do a bunch of other things like take off our seat belt threw our keys out the window put our hands out the window open the door wasn't too clear about some of the things because of the order in which he asked us because he had asked me to get out of the car but i hadn't taken off my seatbelt yet you know you just want to be thorough at that point because you don't want to get shot for the foolish reason so he asked him if i could he's like yeah take it off get out hands up he wants me to side shuffle into the middle of the street and then walk backwards i walk backwards for a few paces before he asked me to get on my knees and crawl backwards until i got to him and then i was put in handcuffs and i was patted down and asked if i had anything on me so now you got the handcuffs on what did you see when you turn around i see a lot i see a lot of cops i see a lot of cars suvs trucks vans you hear dogs barking you don't know where they are it's just a lot of commotion and all you can really think is what could have possibly happened to have this many people from the place that doesn't have a huge population to bring out this many cops but at that point it's not even about like how you feel it's just about how how you react to the situation because like one wrong move is that's that's the end of it and this whole time now zachary you're sitting in the in the vehicle yeah yeah i was just trying to figure out like okay now we're in this but like what's happening and how are we gonna get back to like what we were doing you know like how are we gonna get back like on the road i thought we were going to be out there in like the next 15 20 minutes they told me to get out and then face forwards and walk backwards and then i heard like a lot of people saying a lot of different orders you know and like someone was telling me stand there another person was telling me get on my knees another person was telling me back up and i was like which one do i do you know like i actually like like there was just like a lot going on i just was walking backwards and then after you know a couple steps they told me to get on my knees and i was like in a big puddle of snow dirt you know all that and i was like i'm going somewhere like you know you're gonna mess with my pants you know i i don't know i don't know what i was thinking but i was like like this is a puddle after that they just it was only part at that point that was the only point i was actually like oh this could go really bad what went through my mind when i first heard the news was impossible absolutely impossible i had to fight with myself to be reasonable because of what i had to deal with the next day so i tried to shut my mind off but i i think i slept for a few minutes maybe half an hour that night was extremely difficult i'm trying to think if i actually did sleep or not i honestly can't remember there were so many things going over in my mind i'm trying to figure it out and i just kept asking god all night okay what happened what went wrong i know i knew then i just had to wait for the answer i know there was an answer but i know i had to wait for it so i said okay it was rough though we prepared ourselves to um go to the court the next morning because we were told that they were supposed to be in court in order to be properly charged unfortunately as we drove down the the driveway we were stopped by the police and we were detained for 15 minutes could be more they wouldn't give us a good answer why are we detained when you told us that we couldn't go anywhere i said okay then i'll just go back up to the house and sit down if i can't go anywhere he says no you have to stay here so we sat there and he was asking questions and stuff like that and it was trying to answer but i was trying to figure out where you're going with all these questions and he wouldn't give me a good answer so i said when i won't answer any more questions why should i be answering your questions you're not answering that so you were looking forward to going to your brother in toronto to spend time with your nephew and the next minute you guys are arrested and in jail yeah so when did you see your parents when was the first time you saw your parents it was how many hours later once we finally got to the the precinct we'd be staying at we were there for about eight hours um then we were transported to the courts where that was the first time we got to see our parents so that was the next day it was the other next day yeah we sat there until back and forth he decided after he got i think maybe um from a super superior that it was okay to let us go he came back and he says you you're free to go okay so we took off to court and that's when we first saw the boys we were allowed to go to the back um to see them before they actually come into court and that's when it kind of got teary so when you saw them what what went through your mind was it an emotional thing it was very emotional i think that was like that was the point we actually allowed ourselves to realize our full situation because up to this point it's been a lot of reaction yeah i know this was the first time that i was able to realize how much pain it was it was doing to to me and my family aaron was the first one to be brought in we had to wait a few minutes and i i heard shackles and he came in he looked at me and he lost his composure he burst into tears and when he was able to speak his question was how is zach then we were able to see zach same scenario shackles and then he appeared and he had his head down and i told him to lift his head up and he did and he looked at me and he burst into tears as well he asked me how is aaron it's not like when they're little and they fall down and they get hurt and you can just pick them up i couldn't touch them i i we were completely blocked from each other you know just a glass was separating us and i knew that if i showed any kind of weakness that it wouldn't be good for them and i really needed them to stay strong because we had absolutely no idea what we were dealing with i thought my job was to help them to be strong and i was just trying to help them out to allow their minds to go somewhere else and just be patient because it'll be over soon that's all i could give we couldn't ask them any questions our conversation was supposed to be everything but this big problem that we're facing and then how do you do that because you want um you want answers you want the answers right there and then and you can only you can only look in the eyes to find the answers but i knew i knew as soon as i saw them i knew that we had to fight tooth and nail for them because they didn't know what was going on the main thing was the most important thing was that we had to start praying like never before murder not murder that was way too grave that was way too serious aaron zack no there's got to be a mistake here somebody made a very big mistake here not those two not those boys i'm carol perry and this is my husband phoenix period and we are friends of the simons when we met the family they were in elementary and they were like brothers to our daughters it felt like they were our kids as well i remember i was driving on the 4-1 exiting onto yonge street so i was just on the ramp and i got a call from dave lawrence he's a family friend as well did you hear about the boys i'm like hear what and said zach and aaron are in for second-degree murder i was gonna laugh but right away he said hey this is not a joke that hit me aaron and zach are in jail for second second degree murder those words you can't put those words in a sentence with those boys names it was hard it was hard i remember just falling apart and my kids just crying and my husband just went to grab them and we just hugged the gravity of it all again was the fact that they were still inside like they're still inside by now they should have found out the truth um i mean by seeing that those are the the wills of justice they take their time you know but they were still inside just one night one day in jail it's it's like eternity now two weeks and second degree is going to be something like 10 years because when are they going to clear them when are they going to say oh sorry we made a mistake you know are they warm are they eating who's there who's talking to them can they get phone calls can somebody just somebody can somebody be there for them when you don't even have the means to fix anything your power is that's that's what's the hardest [Music] i just i always i hate crying i dislike it the bible tells us that there will be no more tears no more sorrow i look forward to that how long were you were you there for three three weeks almost four weeks yeah i feel like i kind of like just like blocked a lot of it out of my mind most of the time i just spent in my head a lot of reading a lot of push-ups there's not much to do right in jail so you tend to to do the things you know so read the book definitely read the bible a lot start working out more because i know my dad would get on me if i wasn't we started playing chess scrabble definitely started talking to people you know trying to make the best of a bad situation you just want to understand you see a lot you you hear a lot it's about finding that balance between not being an outlier and not getting involved with something you wouldn't do on the outside because people definitely lose themselves so much goes on even if you're not involved you're either gonna have to defend yourself or you're gonna have to do something for someone else to retain your position is very political in there there's a lot of people that must be appeased you see what you can deal with how much you can handle when you look at what's going on in the world around you when we see what's happening in the media it was terrifying it really really was terrifying and at that point in time as bad as things seemed i was just really thankful that they were alive and they could speak they knew who we were and even though we couldn't hug them we couldn't talk about you know what was going on they were still whole and we were grateful for that because it could have been so much worse i went to the closet and i thought i said lord they need me to be strong and i knelt there and i was just in complete tears just bawling not this is this wasn't crying just this was bawling and just asking what is going on give me an answer and as i was there crying crying crying i hear this voice in my head said what are you doing you asked me for an experience and i'm giving it to you this is one of the things that hollis and i we always pray for you know that god will always lead our our kids into experiences that will draw them to him that has always been our prayer is lord give them experiences that will draw them closer to you and so as i as i heard the voice i got up and i said what am i doing and i quickly went to the face basin and i washed my face and i said okay i said i understand i said okay i know what you're doing i got it and i was able to share with hollis i said i see what god is doing we pray for something and this is what we're getting so i say you know we just have to be strong through this it's going to be all right not sure when yet but it will be when i went to the the the the news story of it on on the internet they were showing uh a car and right there then and then i i saw the mistake because that's not aaron's car aaron has a smaller car it's a hatchback and that car was a bigger car i'm like there's a mistake i right away i concluded that that's the mistake it's it's not eren's car that's where they made the mistake we were able to get bill for the boys but um they were not allowed to be together so we had to have erin house in a separate home so it was a pretty exhausting month you know trying to make sure that they got time you know after being separated so dramatically time with us somebody always had to be with zachary in this age of technology where you know they're always on laptops always on phones they could have none of that you know everything had to be monitored and you know it was like just peeking over their shoulder so it was very tiring for us and exhaust and frustrating for for zach especially it was it was but thank god they cope yeah they got through it lots of prayers once the charges finally were dropped and um you were free how did you how did you feel it's time to get back to regular real life honestly that's like that's the entire time it was just i just want to be like everything to be normal yeah you just try and try and bury it so move on yeah yeah try to we'll try to move on yeah it's yeah it still happened still think about it there's just so many like so much happened that you kind of there's a lot to reflect on and try and piece together and make understanding of even if there is none in every situation we really don't know what the lesson is from this but we know that in everything that you go through there is a lesson so one day maybe we'll get to find out why my boys yes my boys my boys had to go through this but right now we don't know all we know is there are moments when god just has to show himself to you and when he does it you cannot doubt it you can never say oh yeah i had a good lawyer yes they did a good job i'm not going to take that away from them but there's higher power in everything that we go through god just did show his face you know one of the things that we we we did when we met with the liars and though i i we heard good things about the lawyers and that they were good lawyers excellent things um when we met with them i i asked them if we could pray and we prayed and that god will you know guide them through all of this the way in which things turn out i think i think they were even puzzled themselves how it actually all turned out but you know we are we realize and we understand that it was more than just good lawyers it was just the power of god working and it was just the most amazing thing you know to see how god works i just remember them walking through the doors erin with this big goofy smile and zach just being zack you know mr cool you know this didn't do anything to me kind of look but knowing that you know he's a child a lot went through it it was you know you just say you know god you're just amazing you know the way you work is just amazing seeing them walk through through those doors was just it was just everything [Music] it was a really tough time that we were going through but through it all you know i i i know that god was able i i know he was able to do something to change something [Music] he's always been able before why not now [Music] god is able and he he won't fail god [Music] god is able to he he won't fail tell me who can make a mountain move out of my way and who can make a miracle becomes off my face so when the doctor says no can still say yes and when i'm in trouble who's right there to help me pass every test god is able god is here people god is able tell me who can make river out of a little stream and who can tell the clouds to roll back so that the sun can look at me and who can tell the wind to whistle through the trees and when i'm in trouble who's that same god that will come down and rescue me god is able god is able god is able and he won't he won't fail no he won't be [Music] god is able god is able god is able and he won't [Music] know [Music] god won't [Music] he'll never leave he'll never forsake you no [Music] he won't fail he'll be there till the end god he won't fail [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: IIWCanada

Views: 4,111

Rating: 4.8016529 out of 5

Keywords: itiswrittencanada, it is written canada, IIWCanada, Christian, Christianity, Seventh-day Adventist, Adventist, Mike Lemon, Rene Lemon, Bible

Id: wtm58TkWYeQ

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021