Shortly before someone tried to kill him outside his Surrey home in April of 2007, Jamie Bacon bought 10 bulletproof Type III vests from a military surplus store for $1,600 each.

The decision may have saved his life.

Bacon was wearing one of the ballistic vests, rated to stop most handgun rounds, when someone fired several shots at him as he arrived at his home in his leased black Corvette.

One round got him in the middle of his back, but didn’t penetrate the vest.

The first police officer on the scene, RCMP Const. Byron Donovan, said he helped Bacon out of his ballistic vest after the Mountie arrived at the house in the 15800 block of 106 Avenue.

The officer said he saw a Corvette out front, with the driver’s side door open and surrounded by spent shell casings.

When the police dispatcher told the occupants of the targeted house to come out, two women and three men emerged.

One of them was Jamie Bacon.

“Mr. Bacon was yelling that he’d been shot in the back,” Donovan said.

Bacon wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath the vest. When the police officer helped Bacon pull the vest off he said he saw a “red welt” in the middle of Bacon’s back and told him that the bullet had not penetrated.

Bacon was bleeding from what appeared to be a scratch behind one ear.

On Monday morning, at the trial of Jamie Bacon and his brother Jarrod, who were charged with multiple weapons offences following the shooting incident, the RCMP officer was expected to testify that Bacon told him about buying the vests and also about buying an armoured truck. Bacon said he was waiting for the truck to arrive, but it had been held up by CN Rail, according to Crown prosecutor Teresa Mitchell-Banks.

However, the conversation was ruled inadmissible by Surrey Provincial Court Judge Jean Lytwyn.

Jamie Bacon’s lawyer Ken Westlake argued the issue of the bulletproof vests and armoured truck were not relevant to the weapons charges.

His client and his family had been shot at in the past and were talking steps to protect themselves, Westlake said.

Local Mounties had been told the Bacons had moved from Abbotsford into Surrey, Donovan said.

The attempted murder of Jamie Bacon, who was shot at as he arrived home in his Corvette, led to the current criminal trial involving the brothers.

They were charged after the RCMP found a concealed compartment with guns and ammunition inside a Chevy Suburban parked in the Bacon family garage following the shooting.

The defence lawyers said the police did not have a proper warrant to search the Suburban, while Crown prosecutors argue the police had obtained a warrant three days before the shooting incident to install a secret tracking device in the SUV.

It was while police technicians were installing the tracker that the secret compartment was discovered, the prosecution said.

The issue of whether the evidence is admissible will be decided later in the trial.

The Crown has admitted that police violated the Bacons’ rights by searching and photographing the inside of the house without waiting for a warrant, but maintain that wasn’t enough to invalidate the uncovering of the hidden weapons.

During the house search, police discovered images of a concealed weapons compartment on a computer, which the defence said proves the police didn’t simply stumble over the guns in the Suburban.

In the wake of the shooting incident, the Bacons moved back to Abbotsford.

Last week, Surrey councillor and former neighbour of the Bacons, Tom Gill, testified as a witness who saw the aftermath of the shooting.

He and his wife had turned in for the night when they heard the gunshots.

“It sounded like a firecracker,” Gill said. “Pop-pop-pop.”

He ran downstairs in his pyjamas to check the front door was locked, then he went back upstairs.

He could hear voices coming from the back of the Bacon residence.

When he looked out an upper-floor window, Gill said he could see two people in the backyard of the Bacon home.

One appeared to be wearing a “dark-coloured vest” that looked like a bulletproof vest to Gill.

He couldn’t clearly identify the two men, but he said he also saw them apparently searching through a Corvette in the front driveway of the Bacon house.

The sports car was one of several new vehicles driven by the Bacons, who had moved in about a month before the shooting incident.

The trial continues.

dferguson@surreyleader.com