OTTAWA - A quiet Sunday night with a beer and a movie turned into a life-or-death struggle for an Ottawa man when a burglar broke into his west end home through a pet door and stabbed him repeatedly with a screwdriver, the Crown told the jury at his alleged assailant's attempted murder trial Tuesday.

The man ended up grappling with his attacker in his pool.

"Amazingly," prosecutor James Bocking said in his opening address, the man survived.

James Baby Pilon, 48, is charged with trying to kill Kim Eric Logan on June 17, 2007 along with threatening him,  breaking into his home to assault him and aggravated assault.

Logan had returned from the cottage to his small home on the "quaint," tree-lined west end street, Bocking said. He was "chilling" in his basement when he heard a noise at his back door.

He assumed it was one of his animals at the swinging pet door but then he heard the keys jingle in the lock and decided to investigate.

It wasn't his pets.

It was Pilon, who'd likely entered by reaching through the pet door and unlocking the door, Bocking alleged.

"Now Kim didn't know Mr. Pilon: he was a complete stranger," Bocking said. "Words were exchanged. Mr. Pilon said: "Get the f--- out of my way or I'll kill you." He was allegedly brandishing a screwdriver.

A struggle then ensued between the pair in the backyard.

"As best as he could, Kim tried to hold on to the end of the screwdriver as Mr. Pilon continued to strike him and plunge the flatheaded tool into Kim's chest, neck and back a number of times," Bocking alleged.

The two men found themselves in Logan's swimming pool where the struggle continued but, luckily, Logan's next door neighbours came to help and Pilon was subdued.

Logan was taken to the hospital and released later that night.

"It sounds like something out a Bruce Willis movie, doesn't it?" Bocking said. "It wasn't. It was real life."

He cautioned jurors that while that's the case he expects them to hear, his outline isn't evidence and Pilon - listening intently with glasses perched on the end of his nose and waist-length grey hair in a neat pony tail - is presumed innocent.

"The onus on proving his guilt to the necessary standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt rests upon the Crown, upon me," Bocking said.

"Never lose sight of that."

The trial continues Wednesday.

megan.gillis@sunmedia.ca