KILLER OF INFANT SENTENCED
6½ years for man who shook baby
A Windsor man who pleaded for forgiveness prior to being sentenced Tuesday for killing his infant son two years ago was told by the judge to go somewhere else to seek mercy.
“Forgiveness is not something I'm here for,” Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas responded. “Forgiveness is something you will need to find elsewhere.”
Thomas, the regional senior judge for Ontario's southwest region, sentenced the man to six years for killing his seven-weekold son “in a moment of frustration and anger,” and handed him an additional six months of incarceration for assaulting the child's twin brother at that same time on June 7, 2019.
Originally charged with murder, the man pleaded guilty in January to manslaughter in the death of one of the infants and to assault for facial injuries inflicted on the other boy. A court-imposed publication ban prevents naming the parents or publishing information that could identify the victims.
The court heard that the father, now 29, had returned home from his job as a farm labourer that day and was resting in the bedroom with the babies while his wife cooked dinner. The infants were assaulted a short time later when they wouldn't stop crying.
The father brought one of the boys — his eyes rolled back and “clearly distressed” — into the kitchen and the family called a taxi and rushed to hospital.
The mother was initially also charged with murder as she tried to protect her husband when police began investigating what hospital staff deemed an obvious case of child abuse. She began co-operating with authorities after audio and video tapes police recovered from the taxi revealed conversation between the parents detailing what had happened.
The one child died of severe brain injury from being violently shaken. The other child remains in the care of the Children's Aid Society.
In a victim impact statement read in court by assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown, the mother described herself as a broken woman who now spends her time mostly alone, avoiding social settings. Her children, she said, were “my best moment ... now, I have nothing but their memories.”
The young mother had come to Windsor from South Asia in September 2018 to study. Her husband, whom she married a year earlier in their home country, joined her in Canada in February 2019, and the twins were born two months later, six weeks prematurely. The couple lived in a house with 12 occupants who shared a single kitchen and bathroom.
“They had a dream,” said defence lawyer John Sitter. The killing of the infant son was “heinous, horrifying ... beyond the pale,” and an act for which Sitter said his client remains “mortified.”
Assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Brown told the court that, “for all intents and purposes, this was a happy family with a hopeful future,” but for one “serious lapse in judgment.”
The boys' mother, said Brown, is now a “completely broken” woman. In her statement to the court, the mother said: “I came here with my dreams. Now, I have nothing.”
The defence called for a threeyear prison sentence, citing the father's age, rehabilitation prospects and lack of a prior criminal record. As someone lacking Canadian status after the expiry of his work permit, Sitter said the Canadian public has nothing to fear as his client will be met at the prison gate upon his release, “put on a plane” and flown back to South Asia.
Sitter said the court had to look at the law and the circumstances and not at community sentiment
in response to the horrible crime.
“We don't sentence out of anger and, boy, do we get angry about this one,” said Sitter in his sentencing hearing submission.
Citing the killing of an infant and the “heart-wrenching consequences” of the crime, the prosecution called for a sentence in the range of six to seven years. Even that punishment, said Brown, even though it falls within the range of sentencing in other similar court cases, “will be hard for the public to understand when it comes to such small babies.”
A local faith community, to which the offender belongs, petitioned the sentencing judge to show mercy, with a number of prominent citizens among the 235 names who signed support to that message, an act that even the prosecution described as “unbelievable.”
Outside the court after sentencing, Brown told reporters: “There's nothing that this court could do that would satisfy what the public would consider a just result.”
There's nothing that this court could do that would satisfy what the public would consider a just result.