The Kamloops teen who attacked a 46-year-old man with a skateboard outside a Brocklehurst convenience store last year won’t be going to jail.
The boy, who is now 16 and cannot be identified under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, pleaded guilty to an aggravated-assault charge stemming from the March 24, 2013, incident.
The Crown had been seeking a two-month jail term, but Kamloops provincial court Judge Stephen Harrison said such a sentence would derail the youth’s rehabilitation.
“Custody is not necessary and would indeed interfere with the best available prospects of rehabilitation for [the boy],” he said, placing the teen on a two-year probation term.
“In the longer term, public safety will best be addressed by rehabilitation.”
Court heard the teen has lived since May 2013 in a provincially funded pilot-project care home near Sooke on Vancouver Island.
The longboard attack landed Michael Forry in a three-week coma and left him with a lasting brain injury, court heard.
Forry had been drinking with a friend prior to the incident, which began when the boy raised his middle finger at the vehicle in which Forry was a passenger while jaywalking with two other youths.
Forry eventually got out of the vehicle, knocked over a young girl who was with the teen and began shouting threats toward the teen as they met in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven store at Tranquille Road and Desmond Street.
Forry was then struck with the skateboard.
The teen has no prior criminal record, but has shown behavioural issues since an early age, including beating up classmates and, as a nine-year-old, menacing his mother with a knife, saying “I won’t kill you this time.”
Court heard he has acted aggressively toward adults, peers and animals, but has “turned a corner” in his current living situation on Vancouver Island.
Terms of the probation include orders the teen have no contact with Forry, abstain from drugs and alcohol, possess no weapons and surrender a sample of his DNA to a national criminal database.
He is also barred from being in possession of a skateboard for the duration of the probation term.
