Man who threw fatal punch jailed two years

Every day Reinette Doucet’s husband, who suffers from dementia, asks where their son is.

And, every day, the Welland woman must remind him that their 49-year-old son is dead.

“It is heartbreaking to have that conversation with him daily,” the woman wrote in a statement read in court Friday at the sentencing hearing of the man who caused her son’s death.

“It’s heartbreaking when he tries to process this. It brings me right back to the day we lost Richard.”

Richard Doucet was standing near a doorway at Golden Brothers Bar on Southworth Street in Welland on Aug. 16, 2015 when he was punched in the face by Michael Hurlburt.

The force from the single blow caused him to fall back, strike his head on the ground and also hit a metal bar on the door.

He died from blunt force trauma to his head.

In an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines on Friday, 43-yearold Hurlburt was sentenced to two years behind bars followed by probation for three years on a charge of manslaughter.

Assistant Crown attorney Tim Hill told the judge the two-year sentence was a joint submission which was also supported by Doucet’s family.

If the case had gone to trial, he explained, “it would not have been without its difficulties.”

The potential witness pool may have been problematic, Hill said, due to the “sobriety levels” of the people who were at the bar that night.

He also credited Hurlburt with pleading guilty, which spared the victim’s family the “agony of reliving what they have thus far experienced” at a trial.

Hill said the two-year sentence is a balance between “punishment, rehabilitation and reconciliation,” adding the defendant met with members of victim’s family for a reconciliation meeting.

Defence lawyer Jeffrey Root said his client’s life will never be the same.

“The consequences of that night will forever ruin his life,” he said.

No reason was given as to why Hurlburt struck the man.

Judge Tory Colvin said the incident demonstrates how a single punch, a single decision, can impact so many lives.

“This is a case of a single punch,” he said. “What this case underlines is how frail human beings are.”

“When you hit someone or push someone, you are doing something that could quite easily cause a death.”

Doucet, who worked for Crowland Paving for about 15 years, was described by his mother as a “great and loving person to his family and friends.”