Last of 4 teens sentenced in mall attack receives probation

A 17-year-old Brandon girl has been sentenced to two years of supervised probation for her involvement in a group beating and robbery at a downtown mall.

“She wasn’t on the sidelines, she wasn’t someone who threw just one punch or one kick — she was fully, actively engaged in the attack,” Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta said in Brandon provincial court on Tuesday.

The girl, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, previously pleaded guilty to the charge of robbery.

Surveillance cameras captured the teen, along with three co-accused, punch and kick the victim inside The Town Centre mall on March 1, Crown attorney Rich Lonstrup said.

The victim was an employee at the mall and was on her way back from the washroom when she became the subject of the unprovoked robbery. The victim’s phone was stolen during the beating.

Lonstrup said that while the young offender wasn’t the one who started the attack, “she was heavily involved with repeated kicking from the very end to the very beginning.

“The victim received considerable pain. She thought her ribs were broken,” he said. “She tells me she is in fear of encountering her assailants again.”

The Crown said the robbery is a “glaring example of what people are afraid of when they say they don’t want to come downtown.” This type of unforeseen violence against strangers is frightening, he said.

The youth was released from custody after she was arrested in connection to the incident and proceeded to breach her release order multiple times, Lonstrup said. She has since pleaded guilty to those offences.

He said since she was put under stricter conditions, she has been complying with them.

In a pre-sentence report provided to the court, Lonstrup said the girl was asked if she could have made different choices that day, and she responded with, “I don’t know. Probably.”

“She felt bad for the victim, but due to not having a clear memory, she did not think of her after that day. She says she does not really listen to the law and doesn’t know how to feel about her potential consequences,” he said.

Lonstrup said the court needed to send a strong message condemning this type of behaviour and asked the court to impose a six-month custody and community supervision order — which means part of the sentence is served in a correctional centre and the remainder under supervision in the community.

Lonstrup asked that it be followed by two years of supervised probation under the Intensive Support and Supervision Program (ISSP), which offers extra monitoring and support.

Defence lawyer Jonathan Richert acknowledged the severity of the offending. However, he said the girl has no cogent memory of the incident, as she had been drinking.

“Unfortunately, we have a young Aboriginal woman here with a very severe alcohol substance abuse issue,” he said, later adding that she hasn’t had a drink in some time now.

He said she was exposed to alcohol, drugs, violence and various types of abuse in the home growing up, and some of that became “learned behaviour” for her.

The girl had a total of seven foster placements in 10 different homes, the court heard.

During the past year, Richert said, the teen has made “tremendous improvements,” specifically noting that she is going to school regularly and getting well-above passing grades.

“She’s obviously a bright young woman that has a lot of potential, and she needs to be encouraged, and hopefully she does feel encouraged, to continue walking down that path and turning her life around to a greater future than what she’s been experiencing,” he said.

He asked for a sentence of two years of supervised probation, with the first nine months under the ISSP.

Hewitt-Michta went along with his recommendation, but made it clear to the teen that she won’t forget about her.

“If you’re back in front of me for breaching this order … if you’re back in front of me for an incident involving violence, then I will be persuaded that I’ve made a mistake today, and I will fix it,” she said.

The teen was the last of four co-accused to be sentenced for this matter.

A 14-year-old girl who initiated the attack and was also charged with theft under $5,000 from a separate incident was sentenced to two years of supervised probation in June, after spending more than 70 days in custody.

Another 14-year-old girl was sentenced in mid-December to two years of supervised probation. A 15-year-old boy who delivered a single kick in the attack was sentenced to one year of supervised probation in July.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com