“It’s disappointing. The system is very messed up. He killed my son and he’s going to get a youth sentence. I have a life sentence,” says Charla Dopwell, the victim’s mother.
The mother of Jannai Dopwell-Bailey, the 16-year-old boy who was killed in front of his school in Côte-des-Neiges nearly three years ago, was disappointed to learn Friday that one of the two people convicted of the murder will not be sentenced as an adult.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Annie Émond ruled on Friday a youth, who was 16 when Jannai was assaulted, pepper-sprayed and stabbed, will be sentenced as a youth and not as an adult, as was requested by the prosecution.
In December, a jury at Montreal’s youth courthouse found the youth guilty of second-degree murder. On May 19, a different jury at the Montreal courthouse found Andrei Donet, 21, guilty of second-degree murder as well. Donet is required to serve at least 13 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole on the life sentence he automatically received.
The significant difference is that under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the maximum sentence the youth faces is a seven years and only four years can be spent in custody.
The judge will hear arguments on the youth’s sentence next week.
“It’s very, very disappointing,” said Charla Dopwell, the victim’s mother, after the decision was made on Friday. “He is the one who killed Jannai and when he murdered my son he had all kinds of plans as to what to do (afterward). He went to Ottawa (to avoid the police). It’s disappointing. The system is very messed up. He killed my son and he’s going to get a youth sentence. I have a life sentence because I have to deal with that the rest of my life.”
During Donet’s trial, the Crown’s theory of the case was that a conflict between “two groups,” one based in Côte-des-Neiges and the other in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, provided the motive behind the murder. At the start of the trial in adult court, a prosecutor said Jannai was tied to the group based in Côte-des-Neiges, the 160s. Donet was alleged to be tied to the group in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, called the 51s or the DGs. The jury saw evidence that Donet has the letters DG tattooed on his body.
Neither of the groups, or a possible conflict between them, was mentioned during the trial heard in youth court.
On Friday, Charla Dopwell said her son did not belong to “a group” or a street gang.
“That is what they were saying about my son (during Donet’s trial) and he is not a street gang member. Those people (convicted of killing her son), they are the gang members. If my son is a gang member, where is the gang? I would like to meet them. I don’t know where the gang is that my son is supposed to be a member of. He was killed because he innocently went over and asked (Donet and the youth) why they were there (waiting outside his school when classes came to an end that day). They killed him for that.
“Where is my justice for that?”
The youth was expelled from the same school as Jannai weeks before the slaying, but no one who testified at either trial said that was the motive behind the attack.
Defence lawyer Tiago Murias, who represented the youth, said Friday he was happy with the judge’s decision.
“It was what we were asking for, so it is clear it comes as a relief to the client and his family,” Murias said, adding the decision was “very thorough.”
“It took into account the degree of maturity (of the youth when Jannai was killed) but also the progress he has made since he was detained.”
In July, Donet was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He and eight other men are alleged to have played roles in the deaths of two men killed in 2023. The victim of the first shooting, Noël Garcia-Frias, 32, was killed on June 16, 2023 in Charlemagne, just east of Montreal. The second victim, Justice Owusu Tajudeen, a 28-year-old man with ties to a Reds-affiliated street gang, was killed weeks later in Montreal on Aug. 7, 2023.
The Sûreté du Québec believes that Garcia-Frias was killed by accident instead of Owusu Tajudeen.
Donet was behind bars and awaiting trial for Jannai’s murder when both men were killed.