Unrepentant attacker gets 10 years for hammer assault

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This article was published 06/10/2021 (1818 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man guilty of an unprovoked hammer attack that left a 15-year-old boy with lifelong brain injuries has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Jerry Kipling, 31, was convicted of aggravated assault earlier this year.

Kipling has shown no remorse or empathy for the victim, and at an earlier sentencing hearing argued the court was treating him like a killer, provincial court Judge Murray Thompson said Wednesday.

“The vicious and unprovoked nature of this offence, the accused’s uncaring attitude toward it and his very high risk to public safety leads me to conclude that protection of the public and personal deterrence and denunciation must be the focus of this sentence,” Thompson said.

Kipling attacked the boy after the two struck up a conversation at a Selkirk Avenue pizza restaurant on May 30, 2020.

Security video at the restaurant showed Kipling and the boy talking when Kipling showed the boy the contents of his backpack, including a hammer and what appeared to be a knife.

When the boy collected his order and made his way to the exit, Kipling followed him and struck him in the head with the claw end of the hammer.

The handle of the hammer broke off, leaving the claw end embedded in the boy’s skull. Kipling picked up the hammer handle and walked out of the restaurant.

Two weeks later, police arrested Kipling near Austin Street and Pritchard Avenue and found a hatchet in his backpack. Taken into custody, Kipling asked police: “Where are my fingerprints?”, knowing he had taken the hammer handle with him, Thompson said. He later asked police what had happened to the beer he had in his backpack. He showed no interest in the boy he was accused of attacking.

A pre-sentence report prepared for court describes “someone who is not remorseful of his actions,” Thompson said.

The boy — who wears a helmet to protect his damaged skull — spent three weeks in hospital and had three neurosurgeries cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has lost function to his right arm and hand and now has a stutter.

“He will never have a proper life,” the boy’s aunt wrote in a victim impact statement provided to court. “He’s considered ‘special needs’ now.”

At trial, Kipling argued he was not the man depicted in security video attacking the boy, but his aunt Mary Kipling and cousin Darrel Kelly both provided testimony positively identifying him as the same man.

Kipling’s criminal record includes two aggravated assault convictions for a 2015 knife attack on his aunt and cousin. Kipling attacked his aunt with a knife after she asked him to leave her home; and slashed his cousin in the chest and shoulder when he tried to intervene.

While in custody for the hammer attack, Kipling was charged with stabbing another inmate with a pencil.

Court heard Kipling has a family history of residential school involvement and struggled for long periods of time with drugs and alcohol, beginning as a young teen.

Defence lawyer Mike Cook suggested at an earlier hearing Kipling was high on meth at the time of the attack, but Thompson said there was no evidence before the court that Kipling had been using drugs.

Doctors have found no evidence Kipling suffers from a mental disorder and are “unable to pinpoint the source of his aggression,” Thompson said.

Kipling was sentenced to an additional 9 months in prison for possession of a weapon dangerous to the public (the hatchet) and two counts of breaching court orders.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca