Photo: Ty Lim / Merritt Herald

Police could be seen stationed in a Merritt neighbourhood on Wednesday, April 9.

Police are awaiting the results of DNA and forensics testing on a number of items seized last month after heavily armed officers raided a home in Merritt where a couple was being held captive and “tortured,” a judge has been told.

Mounties descended on Merritt on April 9 and raided a home in the 2000-block of Clapperton Avenue.

According to prosecutors, the victim and his fiancee showed up at the house in the early-morning hours of April 8 after agreeing to drive someone there from Kamloops in exchange for $200 and a small amount of crack cocaine.

The man told police their phones were taken away when they arrived, and a woman pulled a gun and demanded wallets, keys and passcodes.

“He says that they were coerced to give them their bank cards and PIN numbers for their bank cards, as well as the location of their RV in Kamloops and the location of a motor vehicle that they have,” Crown prosecutor Andrew Duncan said in court on Wednesday.

The man said he was pistol-whipped, punched, struck with a hatchet and briefly suffocated with a plastic bag. He also said he was threatened with decapitation and had items thrown at him.

“He described to police that he did not think he was going to get out of there alive,” Duncan said.

The man told police he escaped through a bathroom window. He ran to a nearby grocery store and police were called, leading to the raid.

He said he did not know the attackers, but heard one woman say her name out loud when she dialled in to a court appearance from the house.

Court heard Mounties seized dozens of items from the home, including machetes, swords, pellet guns, real handguns and what was described as a semi-automatic submachine gun, as well as about 40 items described as being “related to drug trafficking."

Duncan said police are awaiting testing on the firearms and the apparent drug paraphernalia.

“If these allegations are true, these are extremely serious — essentially confining, torturing and threatening to kill individuals for a period of 24 hours for reasons unknown to these individuals," he said.

Kristal Lynn Poirier, 40, is facing two counts each of unlawful confinement, uttering threats, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm. She is also charged with assault in connection with an unrelated allegation stemming from an altercation outside a Merritt bar on Halloween last year.

Court heard Poirier was arrested shortly after police arrived at the Clapperton Avenue scene on April 9 and she’s been in custody since.

Poirier was denied bail following Wednesday’s hearing. She is due back in court on May 22.