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 juvenile court on March 18, he pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated 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 student’s identity 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, attempted to slit his throat with a knife. The injured student was treated at hospital.
This Thursday, before 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 defendant is 14 or older, and the crime committed would earn an adult a prison sentence of more than two years. An adult sentence would also lift the publication ban that protects his identity.
The sentencing hearing was set for July 24. On Thursday, the prosecutor indicated that an additional day would be necessary. A second day of hearing will take place in August.
Boy’s rights violated by police
The teenager, now 16, was initially charged with 11 counts, including two counts of attempted murder.
His lawyers had tried to have all charges dropped, citing inappropriate actions by Halifax Regional Police officers.
The two counts of serious assault were upheld, but the judge Elizabeth Buckle ruled on March 8, 2024 that the police had 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.
The 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 eight hours of recordings without the teenager’s knowledge, including his interactions with hospital 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 favour of the defence, the judge Elizabeth Buckle stated that these actions by state representatives
— the police — were serious violations of rights and freedoms that should not be tolerated.
She warned that these could be mitigating circumstances when determining sentencing.
In addition, a deputy sheriff had taken a photo of the accused during one of his court appearances, to publish it in a discussion group, with the name of the minor, which is strictly prohibited by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
The sheriff lost his job and faced charges that were eventually handled through an adult offender diversion program.
With information from Blair Rhodes et Gareth Hampshire, of CBC
