Severe jailhouse assault resulted in victim having extensive facial surgery
In a surveillance video taken inside the Regina Provincial Correctional Centre, Alan Boyd Pasap is seen approaching a fellow inmate on a second-tier walkway in the cellblock.
While what follows plays out in just seconds, it proved enough to alter the lives of both men.
On Wednesday, 40-year-old Pasap received the equivalent of a nine-year, three-month sentence after pleading guilty to aggravated assault. Court heard Pasap beat the other inmate into unconsciousness and caused injuries so severe, plastic surgery was required.
To make matters worse, Pasap was already in custody for aggravated assault — a September 2013 baseball bat attack on a loss prevention officer that left the victim with a broken arm.
Defence lawyer Jill Drennan said Pasap’s life story — rife with horrific abuse, abandonment and tragedy — is among the most tragic she’s encountered. She said her client’s past played a significant hand in his latest assault — not just because of the way trauma has shaped him, but because the complainant was said to have taunted Pasap about his murdered father and son.
Pasap’s father Wayne Friday, 44, was beaten and fatally shot in November 2004; Nolen Boyd Tanner, Pasap’s son, was just 18 when he was fatally shot in November 2013.
“(The complainant) was taunting Mr. Pasap about the murder of his son and father and suggesting Mr. Pasap should join them,” Drennan said of the Oct. 4, 2015 incident. “We’re not suggesting that there was anything constituting any sort of defence here, but that is the reason that this occurred that Mr. Pasap has indicated to me.”
Crown prosecutor Adam Breker pointed out there is no audio on the video recording played in court. He said a conversation between the two men — once cellmates — became heated enough to draw the attention of the officer watching the range.
Pasap initially walks away, but returns moments later, appearing to knock the other man unconscious with an initial punch to the face or head. After that, Pasap doles out an apparent knee to the man’s face before punching him several times and finally twice stomping on his face or head. Pasap walks away after delivering the stomps and is quickly taken into custody by a correctional officer.
Breker said the man’s injuries were serious, with correctional officers describing the man as making “gurgling sounds” as they attended to him. Breker said the victim was rushed to hospital with “blood, bruising and incredible swelling to his face.” He suffered facial fractures so numerous and severe he required plastic surgery, the insertion of multiple steel plates in his face and the removal of most or even all of his teeth.
The man also suffered neurological damage, his spouse having described the situation now as “like having another child.”
Calling the beating “vicious,” Breker said the Crown opted to take a “calculated risk” by not arguing for a dangerous offender designation. Pasap’s record for violence includes two previous aggravated assaults.
Drennan noted Pasap has been working hard at improving himself, talking to others about the dangers of the gang life he lived in his younger years, and taking advantage of educational, cultural and behavioural programming.
Pasap told the court of the grief and guilt he endures over his father and son’s deaths. But, he added, he is getting older and wants to “make things right in my life.”
After remand credit was factored in, Pasap was left with 7½ years remaining on his sentence. hpolischuk@postmedia.com Twitter.com/LPHeatherP