Teen sentenced to probation, community service

A teen who brandished an imitation firearm and yelled racial slurs at another teen was sentenced to a year and a half of probation and 75 hours of community service in Brandon provincial court on Tuesday.

The 17-year-old boy pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and failure to comply with his release order.

The Crown and defence jointly recommended a sentence of 18 months of supervised probation with 75 hours of community service.

Georgia Steeves, an articling student with the Crown Attorneys Office, detailed the facts of the offence.

On March 25, the vice-principal of a Brandon high school called police requesting their help after a student disclosed that someone had “brandished a firearm toward them” the prior weekend.

The student gave a statement to police and said the incident happened at some point between 10:20 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on March 20.

He told police he and his friends were inside McDonald’s on Victoria Avenue when the accused started harassing them “by yelling racial slurs at them and trying to intimidate them while wearing a face mask,” Steeves said.

When the victim and his friends left the restaurant to avoid a confrontation, the accused followed them and continued to call them the “N word.”

“The complainant then disclosed that the accused pulled a handgun out of his crossbody bag that he was wearing and stated, ‘What are you going to do?’” Steeves said.

She said the group got into their vehicle and the accused made a motion with the butt of his handgun, which the Crown said was an imitation firearm, to break the rear window of the vehicle, but it didn’t connect.

Video surveillance from the business helped police identify the accused, and on April 30, a BPS officer contacted the accused’s foster parent and asked for him to be brought to the station so police could arrest him, court heard.

The teen surrendered that afternoon.

The teen was held in custody, and the Crown consented to his release on several conditions, including a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, Steeves said.

On May 3, police were sent to the teen’s home after receiving a report that the accused was breaching his curfew. When the teen returned, police arrested him and noticed a folding knife in plain sight on his dresser, Steeves said.

While 75 hours of community service work is a “considerable” amount, Steeves said, it was a serious offence with several aggravating factors.

“The incident appeared to be racially motivated as the complainant was not known to (the accused) and was specifically targeted with racist comments,” she said.

She said other aggravating factors included that a weapon was involved and that he breached his release order two days after he was released from custody.

However, she said it was mitigating that he pleaded guilty and has no prior criminal record. She said there were potential issues in the Crown’s case, including identification and the fact that no weapon was recovered.

Defence lawyer Andrew Synyshyn echoed Steeves’ comments regarding the issue of identification, noting that there was one still shot from a video that would have had to be analyzed.

Despite the potential issues, he said the accused took responsibility for his actions.

He said he discussed with the accused the risk he put himself in by bringing an imitation firearm into the public, as someone else may have had a more dangerous weapon.

“He could very well have the tables turned on him and be injured himself in an incident like that,” Synyshyn said. “The hope is that he recognizes that this could have been a much worse situation for him and for the victim and ultimately that he takes this to heart, that he needs to make some changes to his behaviour.”

Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta accepted the joint recommendation but warned the accused that if he found himself in this sort of trouble again, he would most likely be going to jail.

She repeated Synyshyn’s comments that pulling out a fake gun during a confrontation can put him at risk and said racism has no place in the community.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com