Mom with machete threatened son’s girlfriend

Natasha Ebanks believed her son’s girlfriend was a bad influence. The teens would smoke pot and skip school, Ebanks says. He would disappear for days.

“His teachers loved him, principals loved him, and then he got with this girl, and nobody recognizes him anymore,” Ebanks, 37, said in court on Tuesday.

She moved her 15-year-old son out of Kitchener to Hamilton in hopes he wouldn’t see her. But he found his way back.

Many times Ebanks called police to try to stop him from being with her.

“But nobody would listen to me, nobody would help me,” Ebanks, a single mother, said in a teary statement to Justice Michael McArthur. “I just completely lost it.”

Last July 26, after not seeing her son for four days, she drove from Hamilton to his girlfriend’s mother’s apartment in Kitchener, thinking she’d find him there. He had left an hour earlier.

Just before 6 p.m., Ebanks shattered a sliding-glass door with a rock and entered the apartment, wielding a machete.

She pointed the machete at the woman, who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. The woman was bruised when she fell out of the wheelchair. Ebanks also grabbed the 16-year-old girl around the neck.

Before leaving, she threatened to beat up the girl and her mother and vowed she’d return to kill them.

“On that day, something broke in her,” defence lawyer Hal Mattson said.

Ebanks had reported her son missing to Hamilton police and told them he might be in Kitchener.

Mattson said, “Kitchener police go over that day and say: ‘We can’t do anything because his life’s not in danger. We’ve seen him, he’s OK, he’s not being hurt.’ She loses it.”

Ebanks, who has no prior record and works full time, pleaded guilty to uttering threats and breaking and entering to commit an assault with a weapon.

“I know what I did was wrong,” she told the judge.

Ebanks said she went through proper channels for a year in hopes of preventing her son from seeing the girl. “And I just had enough,” she said.

Ebanks said her son excelled before meeting the girl.

“His teachers are asking what happened to the kid that they knew. And it was just the girl. And the mother supported this.”

Crown prosecutor Ashley Warne sought six months in jail, stressing the importance of denunciation and general deterrence.

“This is an unprovoked attack,” she said. “These two victims are very vulnerable. These are a child and a woman who were in their own home who were victimized in a horrific way.”

Warne said there was no evidence Ebanks’ son was in danger at his girlfriend’s house.

“She took matters into her own hands and was determined to make a point and teach these women a lesson that she was not going to be messed with in terms of the parenting of her child,” she said.

Ebanks must have thought out her plan, the prosecutor said.

“I’m not sure how many people travel around with a machete in their vehicle. On this particular day, she had one.”

Ebanks spent two days in jail after being arrested in Hamilton. Mattson said no more jail was necessary.

“Good people sometimes do bad things,” he said. “In cases like this, I just don’t see jail as an answer to anything.”

The judge agreed, giving Ebanks credit for pleading guilty, showing remorse and taking counselling after the crimes.

“On its initial facts, one might look at it in sort of stark horror and it would probably get a good news headline,” McArthur said.

“However, when one looks at the case and puts it into a grander context and sees the other matters and the other personal aspects, it’s my view that the matter can be dealt with by a probationary term.”

Ebanks got a suspended sentence with two years of probation.

She must perform 80 hours of community service work and give a DNA sample for the national databank. She can’t possess weapons for five years. She must pay for the door she broke. She can have no contact with the victims.

McArthur warned Ebanks if she breaks any probation terms, she could go to jail.