Racial taunts led to tire iron beating
Attacker with no previous criminal record jailed
Racial taunts in a bar started a chain of events that led to two men being beaten with a tire iron and their attacker sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Zyer Harris, 21, who has no previous criminal record, was sentenced Monday in St. Catharines provincial court to serve that time on weekends.
Court heard that on May 16, 2017, Harris was at the Walk In Cafe on Victoria Avenue in Niagara Falls. In an apparently unprovoked verbal attack, two intoxicated men – ages 47 and 43 – taunted Harris, who is black.
Judge Peter Wilkie noted a bartender testified the men also threatened Harris, saying “he was not going to leave here alive.”
He said Harris left, but returned carrying a tire iron “and beat both of them badly.”
During a previous appearance, court was told the two men were struck at least 16 times in less than half a minute after which Harris and another man fled the café.
One of the men suffered a broken eye socket, fractured nose and cuts to the face while the other received facial cuts and a 10 cm cut on his head.
“The circumstances are very unusual,” Wilkie said. “The actions of Mr. Harris … are very serious, notwithstanding the abuse or that this is a first offence.”
In sentencing Harris to the jail time plus 12 months’ probation, Wilkie took into account the fact Harris is currently working two jobs and the court received letters of reference from his former boxing and high school football coaches.
“You took matters into your own hands when you ought not to have done that,” he told Harris.