There are, on occasion, cases that sidestep the usual courtroom clichés and instead wander into territory so unintentionally comic you can almost hear the collective pause as everyone makes sure they’ve heard it right. The recent legal proceedings in Williams Lake, described in The Prince George Citizen’s account, offer just such a moment—an intersection of mistaken identity, an excess of Tylers, and the importance of, well, remembering to photograph the scene.

The Night of the Tylers

As documented by the Citizen, the facts begin with Timothy Solomon waking up from a blackout in a residence on the Anahim Reserve on October 21, 2024, just in time to hear, “he has a knife.” The article details that Solomon’s memory of what happened next was fragmentary—he tried to push his companion out of the way, then found himself stabbed in the leg by someone called Tyler. Solomon, who observed in court that he’d known the accused, Tyler Sampson Meldrum, for about a decade—seeing him at parties and other gatherings—identified Meldrum as the assailant.

But, as Justice Ronald Tindale articulated in his May 29 oral verdict (later published June 12), the identification was shaky at best. The Citizen’s reporting notes that Solomon’s state of consciousness, combined with the chaos of the encounter and general lack of clarity, left plenty of room for uncertainty. Meldrum, 42 at the time of trial, was facing several charges: assault with a weapon, assault with a weapon causing bodily harm, and failure to comply with a probation order that barred him from weapon possession under the Criminal Code.

The outlet further describes how, after the stabbing, Solomon fled the residence. His companion drove him to a Red Cross station in Alexis, and from there he was transported by ambulance to a hospital in Williams Lake.

When Evidence Goes AWOL

The case against Meldrum, as laid out in the Citizen’s coverage, suffered from what can only be described as a spectacular absence of tangible evidence. The knife in question never turned up—not a physical exhibit, not even a blurry photograph. Police, perhaps distracted by the commotion or the abundance of Tylers, also neglected to take any photographs of the crime scene. According to court records cited by the outlet, no other physical evidence tied Meldrum to the stabbing.

Grouping these issues, Justice Tindale observed that, while someone named Tyler had undeniably stabbed Solomon, the remaining facts simply couldn’t sustain a verdict beyond reasonable doubt. The court’s written summary, highlighted by the Citizen, makes it plain: the prosecution did not deliver the connective tissue tying Meldrum, specifically, to the crime.

Tyler by Name, Mystery by Nature

This leads us to the most dryly comic aspect of the affair—a judge ruling, without a hint of irony, that there’s “no question that Mr. Solomon was stabbed in the leg by an individual named Tyler that morning.” Yet, as emphasized in the Citizen’s reporting, the evidence stopped there. That it was this Tyler, specifically Tyler Sampson Meldrum, sitting in the accused’s chair, couldn’t be proven.

The situation, as the outlet also notes, drifted into a kind of Kafkaesque territory. With no physical evidence, unreliable eyewitness identification, and the unlucky coincidence of a common first name, the entire case moved from the realm of legal certainty into something resembling a slightly inebriated guessing game. Should an investigation bank so heavily on a name uttered during chaos? And at what point does a shared first name create a legal smokescreen, a near-instant alibi?

Earlier in their report, the Citizen mentions that Meldrum was almost at the end of his probation order—injunctions against weapon possession included. But this niggle of context, while interesting, wasn’t enough to tip the balance. Without clear forensics, everything else remained firmly in the territory of “could be,” and as any decent archivist or judge will tell you, “could be” isn’t enough.

When All You Know Is the Name

Ultimately, what lingers about this case is not just the practical difficulties of law enforcement in sometimes chaotic circumstances, but the subtle, almost philosophical question it leaves behind: in a world of repeated names and missing evidence, can we ever be certain who did what, when all we have is a single, imperfect clue? Yes, a Tyler did it—but as the archives of justice now record, apparently not this one. The real culprit remains another entry in the ongoing, occasionally absurd, saga of Tylers everywhere. And just how many Tylers is too many for justice to function without confusion? That entry in the logbook is yet to be written.