Two men charged in prison assault
Melvin, Mcneil accused of punching, kicking fellow inmate
Jimmy Melvin Jr. and another man from Nova Scotia have been charged with aggravated assault in the beating of an inmate at a New Brunswick prison in September.
New Brunswick RCMP announced the charges against the notorious Melvin, 38, of Halifax, and Morgan James Mcneil, 29, of Glace Bay in a news release Wednesday.
Joshua Preeper was taken to hospital with life-threating head injuries after he was attacked in a recreation yard at the Atlantic Institution in Renous on Sept. 26.
The incident was captured on surveillance video that was entered as evidence last month at a sentencing hearing for Melvin in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax.
Melvin was convicted of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with a foiled plot to kill rival gangster Terry Marriott Jr. in December 2008. The Crown wants him declared a dangerous offender and locked up indefinitely.
The video shows the three men were in the recreation yard for about a half-hour before Melvin punched Preeper in the head, knocking him to the ground. Melvin and Mcneil then kicked Preeper while he was on the ground.
Melvin stomped on Preeper’s head about nine times and followed that up with more than a dozen soccer-style kicks to the head. Mcneil and Melvin high-fived each other before correctional officers entered the yard and took them away.
RCMP said Melvin and McNeil both face two counts of aggravated assault. They will be arraigned Feb. 25 in New Brunswick provincial court in Miramichi.
Preeper remains in hospital. RCMP said his injuries are still serious but are not considered life-threatening.
Preeper, 28, of Kennetcook, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the November 2011 killing of Melissa Dawn Peacock in Hants County. His brother Dustan, 32, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the slaying.
At the brothers’ sentencing in 2014, prosecutors said Peacock, 20, was stabbed, doused in gasoline and lit on fire while she was still alive. The pair then buried her body in woods in Colchester County.
Justice Peter Rosinski is expected to give his decision at Melvin’s dangerous-offender hearing Jan. 18. Melvin was recently transferred to the Correctional Service of Canada’s Special Handling Unit, a “super-max” prison in SainteAnne-des-plaines, Que., for high-risk inmates who cannot be managed at a normal maximum-security institution.
Mcneil was charged with second-degree murder for his involvement in the May 2012 killing of Laura Jessome, 21, in Glace Bay but pleaded guilty in 2016 to manslaughter.
Jessome’s remains were discovered in a hockey bag in the Mira River. Mcneil received a seven-year sentence, to be served consecutively to an earlier eight-year sentence for charges from an armed robbery.