What is the evidence supporting the allegation that there was no safe avenue of escape for the accused in the assault case?

I begin with a stark reality. The accused’s direct evidence “does not speak to the absence of a safe avenue of escape” (See: R v. Sheridan, supras at para. 99); nor does the indirect evidence. Indeed the evidence is quite the opposite. I need not go any farther than point to the two doorways leading outside, one at the front and one at the back on the main floor of the unit, that as a matter of pure common sense the accused could have readily availed himself of before and instead of going to the basement the second time. Indeed, on the accused’s own evidence, after the first incident in the basement it was he who, wittingly or not, planted the idea with the other male and the female to kill the victim.

I find that a properly instructed jury could not come to any other conclusion than that a reasonable person similarly situated and with the same personal characteristics and experiences as the accused had a safe avenue of escape. Put differently, there is an “absence of any realistic basis upon which a jury could have a doubt as to whether [the accused] had a safe avenue of escape” (See: R v. Sheridan, infra at para. 10). In my view, there is no air of reality to the no safe avenue of escape element and the defence of duress fails on that ground as well.