Women recall horrific attacks
Two tell court of their ordeals as attacker sentenced to 15 years
Megan Carley wrote a victim impact statement five weeks after her drunken boyfriend kidnapped her and dragged her from his car, breaking numerous bones and forcing her to relearn how to walk.
Over a year later, an emotional Carley read her words in court before her attacker, Zachary Holland, 26, who received a 15-year sentence Thursday after pleading guilty to two unrelated violent assaults in Edmonton — one involving Carley’s kidnapping, the other involving a nearly deadly arson a few weeks later— on his former girlfriends.
“I find myself empty, sad and confused,” Carley wrote at the time. “This ruined my life so far.”
Judge James Wheatley sentenced Holland to four years for his attack on Carley and another 11 years for a second attack that nearly killed Justine Saoi.
Holland stood motionless through most of the proceedings, stopping to read a brief statement in which he apologized to his victims.
“I take full responsibility for what happened and I promise it won’t happen again,” he said.
Holland attacked Carley, his girlfriend for nine months, after a night of drinking at a west end pub on March 25, 2012. Holland left the bar without Carley, then caught up with her as she walked home alone an hour later.
The two argued as they returned to her apartment, where the fight escalated. Holland put her in a chokehold and took her to his car. Carley jumped out of the car at an intersection, but Holland grabbed her hair and put the vehicle into gear. The last thing she remembered was thinking she was going to die.
Carley’s legs dangled out of the vehicle as Holland continued to drive at least another 170 metres. After he pulled her in, he headed the wrong way down Whitemud Drive, turning south onto Highway 2.
At 11:25 p.m., a frantic and incoherent Holland parked his car on the highway and ran up to an RCMP cruiser on the shoulder. Holland said someone had stolen his car and pushed Carley out of the vehicle, that he was drunk, but that his girlfriend had to go to the nearest hospital.
Police seized 30 grams of marijuana from the vehicle. Holland’s blood alcohol level 90 minutes later was above the legal limit. And Carley had a broken collarbone, pelvis, ankle, and numerous cuts and bruises.
The second attack, against Saoi, came on July 8, 2012, just days before Holland was to appear in court on charges in the first incident.
Holland and Saoi had been seeing each other romantically the previous summer when he texted her the day before and asked if she wanted to hang out.
He came over to her apartment, where the pair drank coolers, liquor and snorted cocaine. Holland told Saoi that choking during sex was a “big turn on.”
Later, they ended up on Saoi’s bed, where Holland became aggressive and started choking her. Saoi told him to stop, then broke free and ran.
Holland followed and pushed her to the bathroom floor, where he knocked her unconscious with the lid of a toilet tank.
She woke up alone. The bedroom of her Whyte Avenue-area apartment was on fire, and she has no memory of how she escaped.
Saoi had burns all over her body.
The fire caused $500,000 damage. Three other people were treated for smoke inhalation that night.
Holland was arrested three months later in B.C.
In court Thursday, Saoi watched as a friend read her victim impact statement aloud, talking about her “permanent scars from head to toe” and her ongoing questions about why she survived.