Five days after a brutal attack, police continue to watch the Hayer family home in Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood.
Inside, Jasbinder Hayer recovers from an attempted home invasion.
“She’s suffering, she’s 86 years old. But we’re lucky she survived,” son Gurpreet Hayer told Global News.
Police say Jason Anthony White is a person of interest in the assault that left the elderly woman with a broken hand.
White has 34 convictions to his name and spent eight years in jail for violently sexually assaulting a 74-year-old woman.
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The courts recognized he was at high risk of committing more offences, but he was released anyway.
“It’s this incredible hypocrisy in the system,” Angela Marie MacDougall of Battered Women’s Support Services said. “On one hand the system recognizes how dangerous this man is. On the other hand, we’ll let him go and it’ll be an experiment — truly gambling with the lives of girls and women.”
White was designated a dangerous offender, a status that could have kept him in jail for life. But he appealed and won because — despite his lengthy criminal history — there was no evidence proving White couldn’t be controlled in the community.
“They just had to put some evidence before the court for the court to consider,” lawyer Paul Doroshenko said. “The court might have rejected that evidence or accepted that evidence, but it was a failure to put that evidence before the court that led to the court of appeal overturning the original decision for dangerous offender status.”
White was arrested on UBC’s Point Grey campus over the weekend after he breached a condition of his release. The Hayer family said he never should have been let out of jail. They have high praise for police, but feel the justice system let them down.
“This kind of guy, they should be keeping him inside somewhere,” said Gurpreet Hayer. “The system is soft. The judge should keep an eye on this guy.”
Experts say it will take another serious crime before White can be considered a dangerous offender again.
– With files from Tanya Beja