Woman sentenced to 2 years for aggravated assault

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This article was published 05/12/2023 (707 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A woman who violently beat another woman and tried to choke her with a scarf in a Brandon apartment two years ago was sentenced to two years in prison.

Rennie Kristyna Williams, 27, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in provincial court on Monday. The Crown and defence agreed on the sentence for Williams, who beat the woman with a metal bar in December 2021.

Crown attorney Yaso Mathu read the evidence for the charges in court.

On Dec. 18, 2021, Brandon police responded to a structure fire at an apartment unit on 13th Street. Officers found an injured woman outside of the apartment and transported her to hospital. The fire was contained to the one apartment unit and was extinguished, but the unit was left scorched and uninhabitable from the damage.

At the hospital, the woman provided a statement of what happened. She told police that Williams had knocked on her window at 4 a.m. and the two women hung out in the apartment for hours. The woman said Williams started to become rude and so the woman asked her to leave.

Williams refused to leave and threatened to beat the woman with a metal bar. The woman tried to leave her own apartment, but Williams grabbed her and began beating her several times, including in the head, with a metal bar.

She then pushed the woman’s face into a pillow on the bed and twisted her ankle. At one point, Williams held the woman down to the ground and wrapped a scarf around her neck until she fell unconscious.

The woman said she then woke up to the sound of a fire alarm and Williams was gone. The apartment was full of smoke, but the woman managed to escape by jumping out of a window.

Mathu said that because of the attack, the woman had multiple hematomas on her face and was unable to see out of her right eye. Her ankle was fractured and dislocated, which required surgery to fix.

DNA found on the scarf, combined with the victim identifying Williams as her attacker in a photo lineup, gave the Crown strong evidence against Williams, who ultimately pleaded guilty to the attack.

Mathu acknowledged that a two-year prison sentence was on the lower end for an offence as serious as the attack, but said Williams was getting a lot of credit for her guilty plea. The victim was very traumatized by the attack and Williams’ guilty plea spared her victim from having to testify, Mathu explained.

Williams’ defence lawyer, Bob Harrison, said rehabilitation is an important factor in the length of sentence for his client, who is still young.

Harrison said Williams had a difficult life growing up — marked by physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. She was also under the influence of methamphetamine at the time of the offence. The defence lawyer added that Williams has been taking counselling to work on substance use and anger management issues.

Williams, who appeared in court by video from the Women’s Correctional Centre, apologized to her victim.

“If I wasn’t under the influence, I would have never done any of that to her,” Williams said.

Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta told Williams that a sentence for an attack like this, especially given Williams’ criminal record with a previous aggrivated assault conviction, would normally be three years. She agreed that in Williams’ circumstances, and by sparing the victim from testifying, the two-year prison sentence was appropriate.

The judge reminded Williams that she came close to killing the victim with her actions.

“I really fear Ms. Williams that if you don’t get some help, and you don’t get the anger and the drinking under control, that you are going to end up killing someone,” Hewitt-Michta said.

The Crown added that Williams is also facing charges for a homicide in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation last year. She was charged with second-degree murder last year.

In addition to the two-year prison sentence, Williams was also sentenced to a two-year term of probation and a lifetime weapons prohibition.

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