A teenager who once talked of having a "concrete plan" to kill members of his family was handed a probationary sentence Friday that would have sprung him from jail -- had his freedom not been cut short by being denied bail for new charges almost immediately after the verdict.
The 17-year-old ward of Sagkeeng Child and Family Services was given the community-based sentence after pleading guilty earlier this year to violating the conditions of his release in December 2007.
But instead of walking out of the Manitoba Youth Centre, he's being held to face new charges stemming from his involvement in a recent incident where he and another inmate allegedly forged "shanks" out of metal wire and threatened to stab corrections officers with them while in jail.
On June 24, the Manitoba Youth Centre was forced to lock down the cottage that housed him, triggering a call to an armoured corrections response unit to come and extract the teen and locate potential weapons.
In an odd twist of fate, Provincial court Judge Catherine Carlson, the same judge who gave him the probationary sentence, also denied him bail, indicating he was a likely risk to reoffend if released. The two hearings were held back to back.
The teen's criminal history dates back four years. In that period, he's spent more time in jail than out largely due to breaching his release conditions 11 separate times.
The boy's history is troubling. After undergoing a court-ordered psychological evaluation at age 13, he told doctors that he had homicidal ideas and had come up with a scheme to kill his family, according to court documents.
The teen's three-inch thick file Crown attorney Lisa Carson submitted as evidence also contained "extremely violent" pictures and drawings that he had created.
"It's the most concerning pre-sentence report I have ever seen," Carson said, adding the youth poses "a significant risk to public safety."
The teen's flaunting of court orders, along with a number of court delays, means he's spent the last seven months in jail waiting to be sentenced for a summary conviction for admitting he smoked marijuana with two girls.
The time he's spent is longer than the maximum time in custody he was eligible to receive for the breach under youth justice laws.
The girls -- one his girlfriend -- were called as witnesses at his most recent trial, and have alleged that he tried to intimidate them in repeated phone calls to their group home.
As a condition of his probation -- which will see him supervised until well past his 19th birthday -- the teen was ordered to have no contact with either of the two girls.
The teen's lawyers, Kathy Bueti and Shannon Benevides, argued that the teen's earlier psychological reports were "predjudicial" to the court process, as the most recent reports show he's made significant progress in his life and is regarded by social workers to have "come a long way."
Benevides argued that the teen "made up" his shocking homicidal claims when he was younger out of a need for attention. She said the boy felt so unsafe in his substance-abusing mother's care that he would often sleep in culverts or bushes to escape her risky lifestyle.
james.turner@freepress.mb.ca
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