Knife threat in Princess Park, other offences net jail term

A 33-year-old man from Birdtail Sioux First Nation was sentenced to more than 11 months in jail for multiple offences, including an incident where he threatened a man with a pocketknife in downtown Brandon.

Nicholas Benn pleaded guilty in Brandon’s provincial court on Thursday to assault with a weapon, resisting arrest and breaching three court orders over the summer.

In the first incident on June 5, police were called about a man who had flashed a folding knife “in a threatening way” toward another individual at Princess Park, Crown attorney Easton Lacey said.

The victim told police the stranger demanded he “get the f— out of here” before pulling out the weapon, “which caused the complainant to be scared for his safety,” she said.

The victim provided a description of the suspect to police, who located Benn riding a bike in the 100 block of 10th Street, she said. Police arrested him and found the knife lying on the ground near the tire.

While the knife wasn’t used to cause any physical harm, there was a threat of violence, Lacey said.

Benn was released from police custody on an undertaking, which included conditions he must reside at his mother’s address and abide by a curfew. He failed to follow the conditions when police later found him highly intoxicated in downtown Brandon and he was arrested.

On July 19, police were responding to an unrelated call on Cornell Bay when an individual reported a man was lying on the ground unresponsive in the area. Police checked on the man, who identified himself as Benn.

“As he stood, he was rummaging through a black duffel bag beside him, and a brown drug user’s kit,” Lacey said. Police observed a black and yellow long-handled object in the bag that appeared to be a homemade bladed weapon and officers handcuffed Benn to investigate, she said.

Police seized a long object that had a metal knife blade taped to the end of it and noted Benn was in breach of court conditions not to possess any knives.

“There is a risk that comes in carrying these items. He could have seriously harmed others or himself with a weapon like this,” Lacey said.

Four days later, police found Benn was in breach of his curfew again when officers saw him walking in the 100 block of Ninth Street around 2 a.m. When police tried to arrest him, Benn ran and was later tased by police and taken into custody, she said.

The Crown recommended a sentence of more than 15 months for the charges followed by one year of unsupervised probation and a 10-year weapons prohibition.

In the incident involving the knife, defence lawyer Jennifer Janssens said her client saw a man who was yelling at a group of unhoused people who sit at a table every evening in Princess Park to have coffee. He didn’t know the reason behind the altercation, but he told the man to leave the group alone.

“The individual just answered and told him, in worse words, to buzz off and mind his own business,” she said, and then the accused brandished the knife.

“That’s not to give Mr. Benn any credit for … doing anything positive. He should never carry a knife, but there was some indication that other individual was aggressive, and there were some issues.”

Janssens said Benn has struggled with addictions and unstable housing, which resulted in the recent breaches over the summer.

She suggested he face an approximate seven-month sentence for all the charges and asked the judge to be mindful that Benn did not escalate the incident involving the weapon and left voluntarily.

Benn, who appeared in court virtually from the Headingley Correctional Centre, apologized for his actions, saying he planned to “move forward to a brighter future.”

Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta said she understands the temptation for people experiencing homelessness to carry weapons with them for their own protection.

“I do get that, but it’s not OK, and you can’t do it,” she said.

“If there’s a bit of an altercation and you pull a knife out of your bag or out of your pocket, you don’t know what the other person has in their pocket … You could end up stabbed or shot as easily as, you know, anyone else ending up hurt.”

She imposed a sentence of more than 11 months, as well as a 10-year weapons prohibition, one year of unsupervised probation and an order to submit a sample of his DNA. With credit for time already served, he’ll spend about five more months in custody.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com