A 19-year-old Kingston man was sentenced to four years in prison for attacking two teens — in one instance taking a bat to a victim’s heads, nearly killing him.
Josh Owen Simpson pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault, and charges of attempted murder and robbery were dropped as a result of a plea deal.
Simpson appeared in a Kingston court on Monday, with his recognizable red hair trimmed back. He smiled and made faces when he saw friends and family sitting in the court benches, and even blew a kiss to someone in the crowd.
That smile faded quickly, and Simpson sobbed through the victim impact statement read by the mother of the victim he admitted to attacking with a bat in April of this year.
The mother, who Global News has decided not to name out of respect for the victim, said when she went to the hospital to see her son after the attack, she didn’t believe he would survive.
“I remember thinking, “He’s gone — they’re bringing me here to tell me he’s gone.”
Simpson confessed to police, according to Crown attorney Greg Skerkowski, to hitting her son in the head twice with an aluminium bat on April 9.
“Only to his head. He was only hit on his head,” the mother told the court.
WATCH: Friends holding out hope for victim of bat attack
This attack left the 17-year-old victim with severe head trauma. The victim had 50 to 60 staples in his head and had to go through five surgeries, including one where a portion of his frontal lobe was removed. He was also left completely deaf in one ear and with a severe laceration to his tongue.
His mother called her son a fighter, and although he was nearly dead after the attack, he has made a miraculous recovery, regaining 90 per cent of his cognitive ability. Despite that, he cannot work or drive and still struggles to find words.
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Simpson’s second victim did not appear in court on Monday, and no victim impact statement was delivered on his behalf.
According to the Skerkowski, just hours after Simpson and a co-accused — a 17-year-old whose name is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act — fled the alleyway where they left the first victim, they went to an acquaintance’s home to smoke marijuana.
When the two were invited in the teen’s bedroom, Skerkowski said that unprovoked, Simpson and the co-accused allegedly smashed two bongs over the teen’s head and then wrung a T-shirt around his neck, choking him.
“Don’t, don’t. You’re going to kill me,” Skerkowski read the victim’s words from a police report.
The incident left the second victim with two lacerations to the head and one on the right hand.
These two incidents led police on a manhunt. On April 10, police released a photo of 19-year-old Simpson, asking for the public’s assistance to locate him and the unidentified 17-year-old accomplice. Both males were caught that same day.
Simpson has been in custody since his arrest, and his time in jail will be counted towards his sentence. He will serve just over three more years in an undisclosed penitentiary.
This was Simpson’s first criminal offence, something that was considered in the joint submission for his sentence.
Justice Allan Letourneau also said the 19-year-old’s backstory with abuse and drug use was important when considering Simpson’s actions.
A pre-sentence report stated that Simpson had experienced abuse at the hands of his father, and that he was introduced to alcohol at the age of six, and marijuana at the age of 12, which then precipitated a litany of other illicit substances, like cocaine, crack, opioids and Xanax.
“I’ve been in the criminal justice business for 30 years,” Judge Letourneau said to Simpson. “This is some of the worst background information I’ve seen. A lot of things happened in your life that were not of your own doing that didn’t allow you to become a normal functioning adult.”
Michael Mandelson, Simpson’s defence attorney, told the court that when Simpson was first put in Quinte Detention Centre, he had to be put on suicide watch because “he was coming down on a plethora of drugs.”
It seems that drugs are one motivation behind these attacks. Information released in court on Monday showed the first victim and some friends had gone to meet Simpson, the co-accused and other males in an alleyway to purchase Xanax.
Skerkowski mentioned that Simpson and his friends had previously had an issue with a group of males, and that they had at one point armed themselves on April 9 with a curtain rod, a crowbar and an aluminium bat. But when they met the victim and his friends, only Simpson produced the bat.
Tammy Simpson, the 19-year-old’s mother, was present at the court and said there had been trouble between the two groups of boys before the attack.
“This was all over drugs,” Tammy said.
She said she had recently moved her family to Rideau Heights and her son had fallen in with a bad crowd, or “misguided kids.”
She added that she knows her son feels remorse for what he did, and said she prayed for both victims every day.
As for the victim’s mother who spoke in court, she ended her impact statement by saying:
“A four-year sentence, in my opinion, is not enough. Ten years wouldn’t be enough, but I hope Josh takes this 4-year prison sentence and learns from it. Your actions affected many people, and for me are unforgivable.”
The charges against the 17-year-old allegedly involved in the two attacks still have to be dealt with. He will appear in a Kingston court in January 2019.
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