‘It appears you want some help … Don’t prove me wrong,’ the judge said
Expressing shock no one was killed or seriously injured in a machete rampage, a Calgary youth court judge on Monday reluctantly accepted a joint submission that will spare an offender further custody.
“I’m surprised he didn’t kill anybody,” Justice Nick D’Souza said before handing the now 18-year-old a nine-month custody and supervision order to be followed by 18 months on probation.
“I’m still struggling with what happened in the Zoo Lights parking lot,” D’Souza said before accepting the joint Crown and defence submission.
The Court of Justice judge did tweak the proposal slightly, not giving the offender, who was 17 at the time of his crimes, credit for the full 203 days he’s been behind bars.
Prosecutors Jo-Ann Munn Gafuik and Samantha Manning and defence counsel James Wyman said a nine-month term, divided into six in custody and three under community supervision, would be appropriate.
Wyman said that would leave about 2½ months under supervision before his client began serving his probation.
But D’Souza said the teen, who can’t be named under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, would serve three months under supervision followed by 18 months on a probation order.
Wyman’s client had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of assault with a weapon and mischief in connection with an incident last Boxing Day where he swung a machete at two people and three vehicles.
“The parking lot was populated by hundreds of people,” Manning said.
The Edmonton prosecutor was brought in because of a possible conflict on the file as a Calgary Crown was a potential witness.
The offender also pleaded guilty to assaulting three siblings during an incident last Aug. 15, in the family’s southeast Calgary home in which he slashed the hand of one brother, stabbed another in the back and punched and kicked his sister.
Addictions counselling among offender’s conditions
He was on release for those attacks at the time of the zoo incident, in which he was high on a combination of alcohol, fentanyl and methamphetamine.
In the parking lot attack he swung the machete at two individuals, slicing the jacket of one woman.
“I have never felt so much hate from another human being,” the woman said in a victim impact statement.
“Thankfully I don’t know who you are and I don’t want you to ever know who I am.”
Among the conditions of the offender’s supervision and probation is that he take addictions counselling.
D’Souza acknowledged the teen had made some positive steps towards his rehabilitation while in custody at the Calgary Young Offender Centre.
“You need help, take advantage of that,” he said of the offender’s counselling.
“You’ve made some inroads … and it appears you want some help,” D’Souza said.
“Don’t prove me wrong.”