Teen haunted by home invasion: court
A teenager left to die after being shot twice by masked intruders says the trauma robbed him of the person he used to be.
“I am now the person who wakes up to their mom shaking them awake because I’m having such a bad nightmare,” said Devin Howard, 19, in a victim impact statement read in court Monday.
“I am now the person who has flashbacks and some days can’t function … who suffers from PTSD and depression … (and) who hears their mother cry almost every night.”
Crown prosecutor Michael Fox read the statement while Howard sat in court with family during the sentencing hearing of one of five teenaged boys charged in the home invasion at his then Eastbourne Avenue residence near Sherman Avenue in January 2016.
The boy, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery, can’t be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He was Howard’s friend at the time, and the one who devised the home invasion plan in which about $1,000 in video games were stolen, court heard.
Howard, then 17, was shot twice — once in his left arm, shattering the bone, and again in his left leg.
He described his unimaginable pain, so bad that he thought he would never see his mom again and would die alone on his kitchen floor.
His mother, Nicole, in her victim impact statement, spoke of answering her phone at work and hearing “my son’s terror-stricken voice telling me he was going to die.”
At the hospital, where Howard was rushed by ambulance, she felt like she was dying when doctors told her they didn’t know if her son was going to survive.
“When Devin told me, ‘Mom, it’s OK if I do die, just know that I love you,’ it broke me. I felt destroyed.”
Howard had to relearn to walk, tie his shoes and other simple tasks, and still struggles, he said.
Baseball, his greatest passion, is gone, despite once having U.S. college scholarships prospects, his mother says. After the crime, he couldn’t swing a bat and was treated differently, Howard said.
In her statement, his mother said the youth is getting off easy because he’ll be free one day while she and her son will never be free of the challenges ahead. “You were his friend, someone he brought into our home, someone he trusted … Why couldn’t you just take my stuff and leave?”
Worse, he didn’t help her son when he was shot, she said.
“How did you walk past my son lying in a pool of his own blood and not help him?” she asked.
Earlier Monday, Vavadean Spence, 20, was found guilty by Justice Anthony Leitch of breaking and entering, robbery, robbery while using a firearm, conspiracy to commit robbery and aggravated assault. Robbery while using a firearm carries a minimum four-year sentence, the Crown said. Spence’s lawyer, Jaime Stephenson, is filing a constitutional challenge to have it reduced when Spence is sentenced Aug. 15.
He’s the only co-accused to stand trial. The others — Jacob Latendresse, then 18, and Anthony Lloyd Laughing, then 19, and a second youth pleaded guilty to break and enter and robbery. Two testified that Spence was the shooter.
Latendresse got nine months. Laughing is to be sentenced July 20.
Spence’s mother, Valerie Browning, in tears after court, said the police and the co-accused pinned the shooting on her son. Browning said her son had never been in trouble, had good grades and worked to save for university. “My heart is broken because this is not my son.”