Crown calls for jail in 'abhorrent, grotesque' downtown Windsor attacks on homeless men
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“Why did you do this?”
That was a Windsor judge’s question to a young man who admitted being part of a group of males who swarmed and viciously beat two homeless men in separate downtown Windsor attacks in 2022.
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The random attacks were filmed and posted on social media.
“I couldn’t tell you,” responded Jacob Yoell. “I wanted to be cool, I guess. I wanted to fit in.”
Before inviting Yoell to address the court at a sentencing hearing Thursday, Ontario Court Justice Scott Pratt watched with the rest of the courtroom as assistant Crown attorney Zachary Battiston played two disturbing video clips taken the summer night by one of the attackers.
The prosecutor said the videos, shot in a fast-food restaurant parking lot and a short time later outside the aquatic centre, depict an “abhorrent and grotesque demonstration of violence.”
They show two unprovoked assaults in the early hours of Saturday, Aug. 27, 2022. Each stranger is approached, chased down and attacked by a couple of the young men. After their targets fall to the ground, others are shown swarming in and raining down a furious flurry of kicks and blows — many to the head — not even stopping when a victim remains motionless.
It was the posting of those videos to social media — garnering multiple views — that prompted tips from the public that resulted in Windsor police making five arrests, including two youths. Yoell is the last of three adults to be convicted and sentenced.
Describing it as an “extreme amount of violence,” Battiston said the attacks demanded a strong message of deterrence from the court. He described Yoell as the “ringleader,” who attacked the victims the “most intensely and the longest,” encouraging the others to join in, and then robbing them.
One of the victims was hospitalized with a broken jaw while the other released himself from hospital before police could interview him. Sentencing hearings often hear from the victims themselves, through written impact statements, but not here. Battiston said both victims are among Windsor’s “unhoused” and could not be found.
The “violent and disgusting and dehumanizing” videos, he said, will “probably exist forever” on the internet, including Yoell’s repeated use of the N-word to curse and threaten the men, one of whom is Black. Battiston said the courts have emphasized denunciation in determining appropriate punishment in cases such as these where the victims are “the very definition of vulnerable persons.”
Yoell entered guilty pleas to aggravated assault and robbery at a previous court appearance.
I’m scared — I don’t want to go to jail
The prosecution is seeking a custodial sentence of 15 to 18 months to be followed by three years on probation.
The defence, citing Yoell’s guilty plea, lack of a criminal record, good behavour while nearly three years on “strict” bail conditions, family support and his youth — 22 now and 18 at the time — has asked for a conditional sentence (to be served from home) of 12 to 18 months, followed by two years on probation.
What happened that night was “very unfortunate” and “extremely out of character,” said Yoell’s lawyer Jessica Grbevski, adding her client is “incredibly remorseful.”
A conditional sentence order is “not a luxury, it’s still jail — you’re just in the community,” said Grbevski. Referring to one of the criteria for a conditional sentence rather than one served in jail, she added: “Mr. Yoell is not a danger to society.”
Through most of Thursday morning’s hearing, Yoell’s entire body trembled as he sat next to his lawyer in the courtroom, his mother sitting nearby in the public gallery.
“What happened in the past was just a mistake,” Yoell told the judge, adding: “I’m scared — I don’t want to go to jail.”
Justice Pratt reserved his sentencing decision until June. Referring to the punishment he must now decide, the judge concluded the hearing: “I don’t know what my answer will be.”
Co-accused Tyler Ducharme and Tyrell Patterson were convicted and sentenced earlier on a single count each of aggravated assault.
Last Oct. 9, Ducharme was handed a nine-month conditional sentence to be served from home, but was given 233 days credit for 155 days already spent in actual pre-sentence custody.
Patterson on May 23, 2023, received a nine-month custodial sentence but received similar credit for pre-sentence custody.
Each was also placed on three years probation, and handed a 10-year weapons prohibition and ordered to submit a blood sample for a national police DNA databank used to help solve crimes.
