‘No longer feel safe’ after attack, senior tells court

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This article was published 01/03/2022 (1486 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 98-year-old Winnipeg woman hospitalized after a stranger pulled her walker out from under her says she now “languish(es) in constant pain” and has lost her treasured independence.

“Her cowardly attack on me left me with disbelief that such trauma would ever occur in my lifetime,” the woman wrote in a victim impact statement provided to court for the sentencing of 44-year-old Amanda Castel.

The woman was rounding the corner of the former Hudson’s Bay building onto Portage Avenue, May 15, 2021, when she was “hit full force like a bolt of lightning.”

“(Castel) ran up behind and spun my walker away,” she said. “I just lay against the building unable to get up.”

The woman suffered a fractured pelvis and spent six weeks in hospital.

“I can no longer do the things I had been able to do before,” she said. “I have not left my building since my discharge from hospital, as I no longer feel safe to be outside… I know I will never make a full recovery.”

Castel pleaded guilty Monday to aggravated assault and a second count of assault in connection to another senior she attacked a month earlier in a Winnipeg bus shelter.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” said Castel, who was sentenced as part of a joint Crown and defence recommendation to nine-months time served, plus three years supervised probation. “I respect my elders because that is what my culture does.”

On April 11, 2020, a 93-year-old woman was waiting in a bus shelter at the corner of Graham Avenue and Fort Street when “for no apparent reason,” Castel punched her in the face, stomped on her foot and threatened to kill her, Crown attorney Nicole Roch told provincial court Judge Rachel Rusen.

The woman suffered minor injuries but did not require medical attention.

“It’s shocking for members of the public to be attacked unprovoked,” Roch said. “It’s even more shocking when these victims are elderly, people who are essentially vulnerable.”

Castel was arrested and had been released on an undertaking when she was involved in the second attack. She was arrested 10 days later, after police spotted her on Portage Avenue.

Court heard Castel suffers from serious substance abuse and mental health issues, including schizoaffective disorder and had a traumatic upbringing stained with violence.

Castel’s attack on the 98-year-old victim wasn’t planned, but was instead an impulsive decision driven by her extreme intoxication, Roch said.

“Certainly, if this had been a more deliberate sort of incident, the Crown would be looking at something in the range of a penitentiary sentence, given the nature of the injuries and the vulnerable state of the victim,” Roch told Rusen.

Castel has participated in counselling and treatment while in custody and according to jail staff has become one of their “biggest success stories,” said defence lawyer Trevor Sicotte. Since being taken into custody, Castel has reconnected with family and close friends who will provide her with the strong support she needs in the community.

“She is not the same person who was attacking random people in the street,” Sicotte said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca