‘Relentless’ attacker jailed 15 years

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This article was published 04/08/2020 (1359 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for a month-long string of violent, unprovoked attacks that sent three people to hospital.

Kyle Morgan Sinclair, 29, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of aggravated assault, assault, assaulting a peace officer with a weapon and six other weapon-related offences.

Sinclair “lost all sense of self-control” and was “relentless in his attempts to cause harm,” Crown attorney Monique Cam told provincial court Judge Cynthia Devine.

According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court, Sinclair was at the Manwin Hotel on April 12, 2019, when he and another accused person attacked a man Sinclair believed had been “talking s…” about his sister. After beating the man inside a hotel suite and hallway, Sinclair and another man used a broken crack pipe to carve a 20-30 centimetre-wide letter “S” onto his back and torso.

Police later found the man tied up and bloody, lying in a bathtub.

Days later, Sinclair, high on drugs and alcohol, was at a Vaughn Street apartment when he stabbed a male acquaintance in the stomach and then tied his legs and hands before stabbing him again in the legs and back. Sinclair cut some of the man’s hair off before the victim jumped out of a window to escape.

Police found the man sitting on the sidewalk outside The Bay on Kennedy Street, with his “intestines… sticking out,” Cam told court, reading from the agreed statement of facts.

Sinclair later posted a video to Facebook bragging about the attack, blaming it on a “gang beef.”

On May 10, 2019, Sinclair and another man were at a Fountain Avenue apartment building when, after a physical dispute with a stranger, Sinclair fired a sawed-off shotgun through an apartment door, hitting a man in the hip. Police, responding to a tip, arrested Sinclair the following day at the Manwin Hotel.

While in custody at Milner Ridge Correctional Centre, Sinclair, irate at his radio being taken away, lunged at a correctional officer, attempting to slash his face with a homemade shank.

Sinclair was introduced to gangs early in his life, finding a sense of belonging absent in his own dysfunctional home, said defence lawyer Nolan Boucher.

Court heard Sinclair has been diagnosed with multiple disorders, including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, bi-polar disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

Sinclair has “a low level of self-control, complicated by drugs and mental-health issues,” Boucher said.

“He knows he can’t survive this lifestyle long term. He can’t believe he took things as far as he did.”

Devine urged Sinclair to take advantage of rehabilitative programming in prison and turn his back on the gang life.

“There is no positive outcome to being in a gang,” she said. “There are momentary highs, but it usually ends up bad, either here or in a coffin.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca