Man, 20, who terrorized teens gets 90 days

An Edmonton drug dealer’s accomplice in a violent “campaign of terror” against two 16-year-old girls was sentenced Monday to jail on weekends.

Tyrone Emberley, 20, was handed a 90-day jail term, but provincial court Judge Elizabeth Johnson agreed to let him serve the time intermittently so he could continue to work.

Emberley, who earlier pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful confinement and possession of a weapon, was also placed on probation for 18 months and ordered to perform 150 hours of community service.

“The events surrounding these offences are horrific,” Johnson said, noting the victims of the “brutality” were 16-year-old girls and one of them was injured. “Both would have been terrified.”

The judge accepted that Emberley’s role was on the “low end,” and that he received a positive pre-sentence report, has accepted responsibility and shown both remorse and insight.

Johnson also noted Emberley spent 26 days in pre-trial custody and was under house arrest for 18 months while on bail.

According to an agreed statement of facts, Emberley and convicted drug dealer Kenneth Matthews, 19, were in a car with the two girls on Sept. 24, 2014. While the men had left the vehicle, the girls found a plastic bag of ecstasy and $85 and fled with it.

The next night, the girls were at a friend’s house when Matthews and Emberley came in, armed and angry over the theft.

Both girls were forced into a bedroom and one girl was made to watch while Matthews hit the other with a baseball bat, choked her and cut her hair with scissors. Matthews then told the girls they would have to sell their bodies to pay for the stolen ecstasy.

Matthews took the beaten girl into the kitchen and told her he was going to burn her face on the stove. As Matthews turned on one of the burners, the beaten girl struggled to escape.

Matthews then burned her cheek with a lit cigarette and made her eat cigarette butts and drink spoiled chocolate milk.

Court heard Emberley pointed a knife at the other girl and told her he was going to knock her unconscious. Matthews interrupted him and said they would put both girls in a vehicle’s trunk using plastic garbage bags. The pair left and the girls fled. They later went to police.

In a victim impact statement, the father of the girl who was tortured wrote he and his wife have lost their daughter and said she is no longer the honour student and good athlete that she once was.

“No words can convey the magnitude of our daughter’s loss,” he said, adding her leg was broken in the attack, she has facial scarring from being burned and she suffered psychological damage.

As well, he said the family was forced to move over fears of retribution.

The events surrounding these offences are horrific. Both (girls) would have been terrified.