Local news delivered daily to your email inbox. Subscribe for FREE to the rdnewsNOW newsletter.

Lethbridge youth acquitted of attempted murder, found guilty of aggravated sexual assault

Mar 22, 2018 | 1:27 PM

LETHBRIDGE – A 20-year-old Lethbridge man has been found not guilty of attempted murder but convicted on multiple other counts – including aggravated sexual assault –  following hearings and a trial that stretched over several years.

The man cannot be identified, as he was 17-years-old when he committed the offence in 2015. Scheduling issues forced the trial to be heard in segments in December of 2016, September of 2017, and finally in February of 2018.

“When I consider the magnitude of the evidence that contradicts the accused’s evidence that he never left his residence and did not attend the residence of [the victim], I come to what I consider the inevitable conclusion that he is lying, and I reject his evidence,” stated Judge Gregory Maxwell, while delivering his decision Wednesday afternoon, Mar. 21.

Maxwell found that sometime between 4 and 5 a.m. on May 3, 2015, the man entered a south side apartment in Lethbridge that was owned by the 45-year-old victim’s step-father. He found her sleeping on the couch and proceeded to sexually assault her. When the woman’s step-father woke up and confronted him, the youth dragged her outside at knife point, continued the sexual assault, then cut her throat and fled the scene.

While she survived the 14 cm cut to her throat, both the woman and her step-father died of unrelated causes prior to the trial.

They were however, able to provide statements to the Lethbridge Police Service in the hours after the attack, and the victim’s step-father identified the youth by name – it was a different first name but same last one – also providing a description of the man and his address. A search of the youth’s nearby home turned up a shirt that had the victim’s DNA on it.

That brought Maxwell to the testimony of the young man, in which he claimed he had been attacked by four strangers a week earlier while walking in downtown Lethbridge. It was suggested that the victim could have been one of his attackers and that’s when her DNA came to be on his shirt.

“Simply because some set of circumstances is not impossible, does not equate with making it reasonable,” said Maxwell. “The inference sought is so remote and without any real basis in fact, as to make drawing it pure and complete speculation, and I am not prepared to make that leap.”

After reaching those conclusions, Maxwell turned to the charges before the court. In finding the young man not guilty of attempted murder, he explained that the Crown had failed to prove there was specific intent to kill.

Maxwell then explained that he was “not left with any doubt,” that the established facts supported convictions for aggravated sexual assault, break and enter to commit sexual assault, threats to cause death, and unlawful confinement.

With the convictions entered, the defence asked for the preparation of a pre-sentence report, psychological assessment, and Gladue report (an examination of the youth’s Indigenous heritage and upbringing).

Those reports will be used by the Crown to determine whether they plan to seek an adult sentence for the offender, who was days away from his 18th birthday when he attacked the woman.

The case will return to court in April for a progress update on the reports, which are expected to take upwards of two months to fully complete.

(@PatrickBurles on Twitter)