A teenager who stabbed two adults at the high school he attended in 2023 in the Halifax, Nova Scotia, area will ultimately not receive an adult sentence.
In youth court on March 18, he pleaded guilty to two counts of serious assault.
The case was weighed down by the actions of the Halifax police, who violated the rights conferred on the boy by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Two people stabbed
On March 20, 2023, the student of Charles P. Allen Highlocated in the sector Bedfordhad been summoned by the deputy principal to discuss disciplinary action against him, because surveillance video in the school had captured him putting up posters without permission.
The identity of the student cannot be revealed publicly, since he is a minor.
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Halifax Regional Police outside Bedford High School on the morning of March 20, 2023.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Héloïse Rodriguez-Qizilbash
The teenager, then aged 15, had four knives in his bag. He inflicted a stab wound on the deputy director’s back. Another member of staff, who intervened, received a stab between the shoulder blades and another in the side.
Both victims were treated in hospital. The one who was stabbed twice had to undergo surgery.
The teenager fled the scene and, on the lawn outside the school, tried to slit his throat with a knife. The student was injured and treated at hospital.
This Thursday, in the youth court, the prosecutor Terry Nickerson indicated that the Crown will not request that the teenager receive an adult sentence, as it had suggested last year.
The prosecutor can ask the court for an adult sentence if the accused is 14 years of age or older, and if the crime committed would result in an adult being imprisoned for more than two years. An adult sentence would also have lifted the publication ban which protects his identity.
The sentencing hearing had been set for July 24. On Thursday, the prosecutor said an additional day would be needed. A second day of hearings will be held in August.
Boy’s rights violated by police
The teenager, who is now 16 years old, was initially targeted by 11 charges, including two of attempted murder.
His lawyers had tried to have all charges dropped, citing inappropriate actions by Halifax Regional Police officers.
The two counts of aggravated assault were upheld, but the judge Elizabeth Buckle ruled on March 8, 2024, that police violated the boy’s rights, which are guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by filming him without his knowledge while he was hospitalized.
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In March this year, a judge ruled in favor of the teenager’s defense and ruled that Halifax police had violated the accused’s rights by filming him at the hospital. (Archive photo)
Photo : CBC / Robert Short
The judge further ruled that the police acted improperly in seizing the boy’s clothing without a search warrant.
Patient filmed in his hospital room
When the young man suffered self-inflicted injuries after the attacks, he was taken to hospital for treatment. Police officers from the Halifax Regional Service accompanied him and monitored him at all times, we learned in court.
In total, the police made 8 hours of recording without the teenager’s knowledge, including his interactions with hospital nursing staff.
Called as a witness by the defense, a hospital nurse IWK of Halifax had reported having been uncomfortable
to be filmed.
Patient confidentiality is paramount
she said in her testimony. It took the intervention of hospital management for the police to at least stop filming the health care workers as they entered the boy’s room.
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A nurse from the IWK Hospital in Halifax testified for the defense. (Archive photo)
Photo : Radio-Canada / Jonathan Villeneuve
She also said the teenager was not conscious after being treated, and noted that patients often speak delusions or incoherence when they wake up after general anesthesia.
In her decision which ruled in favor of the defense, the judge Elizabeth Buckle declared that these actions by state representatives
— the police — were serious violations of rights and freedoms that should not be tolerated.
She warned that there could be mitigating circumstances during sentencing.
Furthermore, a deputy sheriff had taken a photo of the accused during one of his appearances in court, to publish it in a discussion group, with the name of the minor, which is strictly prohibited by the Law on the system criminal justice for adolescents.
This sheriff lost his job and faced charges, ultimately handled by a diversion program for adult offenders.
With information from Blair Rhodes et Gareth Hampshire, of CBC
