Homeless man off to jail after assault on senior in skywalk

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This article was published 11/11/2022 (1374 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man who randomly attacked a disabled elderly woman in a downtown skywalk has about eight months left to spend in jail after he was sentenced earlier this month.

Brendan White had been drinking alcohol and hand sanitizer before he came up behind a 76-year-old woman in a wheelchair and grabbed her by the head on March 2 in the skywalk near Cityplace and the Canada Life Centre.

He was sentenced by provincial court Judge Michael Clark on Nov. 3 for that assault causing bodily harm, as well as a subsequent unprovoked, violent attack and a prior forcible entry into someone else’s hotel room.

White, who was 28 at the time and homeless, received a sentence of 231 days in jail followed by two years of supervised probation.

Crown attorney Thomas Boult sought a total sentence of 20 months in jail plus probation, and he asked for a court order that would ban White from going in or near the skywalk. The judge declined to impose that ban after White’s defence lawyer, Mat Schwartz, pointed out his client is homeless and winter is coming.

Third violent conviction

“This is just a shocking, random attack against a vulnerable, elderly person with no means to defend herself,” Boult said, noting it was White’s third violent conviction. He had been convicted of assault causing bodily harm in 2015 and again in 2019.

Court acknowledged White’s addiction and mental-health problems. The fact he was intoxicated at the time is “an explanation, it’s not an excuse,” the judge told him.

“People in Winnipeg, downtown in skywalks, they need to be safe, and when you’re mad at the world or intoxicated or whatever it is that’s causing your behaviour, people aren’t safe, and it’s judges like me that need to make sure that the public is safe,” Clark said.

”When you’re mad at the world or intoxicated or whatever it is that’s causing your behaviour, people aren’t safe.”–Judge Michael Clark

The woman who was attacked didn’t want to be publicly identified, but she told the Free Press Thursday she still suffers from head and nose pain since the incident. White grabbed her and broke her glasses and her wheelchair’s battery pack, both of which were later replaced or repaired. She was cleared by paramedics after security guards stopped the attack, but she later went to the hospital and was informed her head was badly bruised.

In a victim-impact statement the Crown attorney read aloud in court, the woman explained she saw White threatening other people in the skywalk and she approached to ask them if they were OK.

“Once I stopped to check on them, I didn’t know he was going to go behind me,” she said, saying White “hit me so hard I almost passed out.”

She expressed a desire for White to get help, but said she has since revisited the skywalk and now no longer talks to people she doesn’t know. She said she has chosen to forgive him because of her faith in God.

“The best thing to do is forgive,” she said Thursday.

Brain injury blamed for paranoia, drinking

Three days after he assaulted the senior in the skywalk, White punched a Marlborough Hotel manager in the face. He was “blackout” intoxicated both times, his defence lawyer said. Both attacks were captured on security cameras.

Earlier, in January, White consumed methamphetamine and hairspray and fought with police officers who were trying to arrest him after he’d forced his way into someone else’s hotel suite on Main Street. He’s now banned from the Marlborough Hotel and the Main Street location for two years.

The court process offered little explanation for the crimes, other than White’s substance use and the suggestion that he’d suffered a brain injury in 2017 and has been paranoid since then, drinking to cover up feelings that strangers are making fun of him. He is expected to stay in shelters once he’s released from jail.

Schwartz argued against incarceration and in favour of probation, asking the court to order White to attend addictions treatment and grief counselling following the recent death of his mother.

The judge imposed a condition requiring White to abstain from drugs and alcohol and attend any counselling his probation officer recommends.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca