Teen convicted of murder in prom night slaying
Hackett convicted in stabbing murder of St. Patrick’s student Volpi in 2014
It might have felt like justice, but there was little to celebrate.
Danny Volpi, father of Brandon Volpi — the 18-year-old St. Patrick’s High School grad who was slashed to death on his prom night — wasn’t on his way to a party after a jury returned a guilty verdict on Friday in the 2014 killing of his son.
The grieving father was heading to Hope Cemetery on Bank Street to visit his son’s grave.
“We got what we were looking for. He was convicted ... It doesn’t bring my son back. I still lost a part of me. That’s never going to change. That pain’s there forever,” Danny Volpi told the Citizen moments after his son’s killer, Devontay Hackett, was led away in handcuffs, convicted of second-degree murder.
“Am I happy? Not really. My son doesn’t come back. But this guy’s going to serve time ... I’m glad it’s over. I can move on in my life, without my son, unfortunately.”
On June 7, 2014, after a brawl that lasted only seconds, Brandon Volpi spent the final minutes of his life outside Les Suites Hotel, clutching his slashed throat, yelling, “Who did this? Who did this?”
Volpi was a good son with a big heart, the guy who always stood up for his friends, court heard during the trial. It was no different on that fateful night, when a friend asked to be escorted to a neighbouring hotel out of fear of then-18-yearold Hackett, who was waiting outside for him.
“(Brandon) steps in to help people, and that’s how I raised him,” his father said outside court. “He did a good thing, unfortunately it took his life.”
Volpi was sober and unarmed. Hackett was drunk — he’d been drinking for 14 hours straight — and had a knife.
A brawl ensued that lasted about seven seconds, and the final, chilling images of Volpi’s life were captured on cellphone video taken by other grads from their hotel balconies above. Volpi’s throat was slashed, his heart pierced by a knife.
Surveillance video across town captured Hackett’s every move after the killing, from his fleeing the downtown murder scene to hopping on an eastbound bus to getting into the back seat of a cab out in Orleans.
The case against Hackett was anchored in video and DNA evidence, including a bloody white T-shirt he discarded after the killing. Blood from both the victim and the killer were on the shirt.
When Hackett was arrested a month later in Toronto, he was wearing the same Michael Kors watch he had on the night of the murder. It still had his victim’s blood on it. In the days he lived as a fugitive, he checked online news stories about the killing, including a story that said he was wanted for second-degree murder in Volpi’s death.
He also researched how to move to Jamaica before police caught up to him.
The murder left Volpi’s family devastated.
“It tore us apart,” Danny Volpi said. “Without the support of my friends and family ... I wouldn’t be here right now.”
He said he’s going to keep his dead son’s memory alive, and while he’s pleased with the guilty verdict, he is worried about the killer’s sentencing.
“I hope he gets what’s coming to him,” Volpi said.
Hackett will be sentenced next month. The penalty carries an automatic life sentence, but Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland still has to decide when Hackett will be eligible for parole.
The jury endured five weeks of trial, including graphic evidence, and in closing arguments was urged to believe two wildly different interpretations of the key video that captured the brawl.
Prosecutors said it showed Hackett attacking Volpi with a knife. No, it proved his innocence, defence lawyers declared.
Defence lawyer Joseph Addelman said the prosecution’s case was built on uncertainty and riddled with reasonable doubt.
He told the jury the blurry cellphone video didn’t show a knife, let alone one in Hackett’s right hand. If anything, he said, the video vindicated his client because it showed him punching another man in the head during the brawl, with his right hand, and without any knife in it.
The blotchy video was dissected for the jury by the Crown and defence, frame-by-frame, in slowmotion, again and again, for hours.
The jury also heard from defence witness Danielle Saunders Gauthier. She was the only one, of all the witnesses, who testified that she saw a knife, and she placed it in another man’s hand. Addelman told the jury that prosecutors didn’t call her to the stand, and instead “chose to call a bunch of kids who didn’t see anything.”
Assistant Crown attorney Michael Boyce told the jury a different story, one in which he said Hackett could clearly be seen in the video killing Volpi. He told the jury that Hackett intended not only to fight, but to kill.
In the end, the jury believed the Crown’s version of the doomed night.