A young Kingston man with no prior record has been sent to prison for back-to-back attacks on two other young males, one of which resulted in devastating injuries and both of which were characterized by Justice Allan Letourneau as brutal and cowardly.

The judge told Josh Owen Simpson that, “a penitentiary sentence is not a walk in the park. You’re not going to have an easy time in prison.”

But given what he did, the judge told Simpson, “the sentence has got to have a certain amount of pain for you.”

He credited the 19-year-old with 335 days for the eight months he’d already spent in pretrial custody in Quinte Detention Centre and sentenced him to a further 1,125 days in prison (about 37 months), the sum total deemed equivalent to a four-year sentence.

Simpson, 19, pleaded guilty in late September to two aggravated assaults, the first involving a 17-year-old boy on the evening of April 9, and the second, a 19-year-old acquaintance, about eight hours later between one and two in the morning on April 10. But no details of the crimes were put on record when the pleas were entered. The Crown prosecutor requested a pre-sentence report and Simpson’s case was put over to this week.

Assistant Crown attorney Greg Skerkowski told the judge the 17-year-old victim contacted an associate of Simpson’s on April 9 wanting to buy some marijuana, and arrangements were made to meet behind the old First Avenue Public School building that evening.

When the 17-year-old and a male friend arrived at the school yard around 5:20 p.m., Skerkowski said, they saw two male figures standing in a nearby alley. As soon as the teen approached, however, the judge was told, Simpson pulled out the aluminum bat he had concealed and struck the teen in the head with it, then struck him in the head with it a second time.

The victim’s mother told Justice Letourneau in her victim impact statement that when she closes her eyes she hears the crack of that bat.

Skerkowski said one of Simpson’s two companions, a youth of 17, paused to steal the injured teen’s wallet before they abandoned him and fled the area.

The victim was discovered soon afterward in critical condition and was rushed to hospital, where he was found to have multiple skull fractures and a severe traumatic brain injury with life-threatening swelling. It was thought he might not survive.

While he was in hospital fighting for his life, Simpson and one of his companions, the same 17-year-old who stole the first victim’s wallet, turned up at a townhouse on Newmarket Lane in the new north-end subdivision adjacent to the Cataraqui River.

There, at about 1 a.m. on April 10, Justice Letourneau was told, a 19-year-old acquaintance of the pair answered their knock and invited them inside to his room in the garage to smoke some marijuana.

Once in and after sharing some of the 19-year-old’s weed, Skerkowski said, they revealed they were on the run from police “because they beat up a kid — and there were others on their list.” The 17-year-old then sucker punched their host, according to the Crown prosecutor, and Simpson followed suit.

Simpson and the 17-year-old broke two glass bongs over their 19-year-old victim’s head, inflicting lacerations to his head and right hand, and, Skerkowski said, they were trying to strangle him with a T-shirt when he managed to call out for them to “stop” and to protest aloud that they were going to kill him.

Justice Letourneau asked about the location and severity of the 19-year-old’s wounds and was told the police brief didn’t specify. Skerkowski said only that he was treated and released from hospital.

The noise he was making prompted a female resident of the townhouse to investigate, however, and the judge was told that Simpson and his 17-year-old partner in crime broke off their assault and fled with the victim’s cellphone and wallet.

Kingston Police arrested Simpson’s 17-year-old crime partner just shy of 13 hours later, following a short foot chase in the area of Montreal Street and John Counter Boulevard. Skerkowski said he was still carrying the older victim’s cellphone and wallet containing his driver’s licence.

Simpson was spotted by patrol officers a few hours later on Bagot near James Street just after 5 p.m. on April 10 and was arrested without a chase.

The 17-year-old’s mother told Justice Letourneau about learning that her son had been beaten and rushed to the hospital and her own rush to be at his side.

When she was placed in a room instead of being taken to see him, she said she thought “he’s gone.” But he was in surgery, and when she finally was admitted to his bedside, she described seeing her child lying there, his face bruised and swollen, hooked up to tubes and monitors and said, “no parent should see their son in that condition.”

Doctors told her that his chances of survival weren’t good and that if he did survive there was a strong possibility he’d be a vegetable.

He had to have multiple surgeries, one of which removed part of his left frontal lobe. He also required a tracheotomy for a time and it was 23 days after his admission to hospital, she said, before she heard him speak.

Then in May his feeding tube was removed and he was transferred from Kingston General Hospital to Providence Care for six weeks of rehabilitation therapy.

His medical team recommended in July that he apply to the Ontario Disability Support Program, she said.

Justice Letourneau was told he’s been left with some cognitive deficits, is now profoundly deaf in one ear and his driver’s licence is currently under medical suspension.

There’s also been a profound impact on his younger brother. “I have an 11-year-old son who still gets scared when [his older brother] leaves the house,” the victim’s mother told Justice Letourneau.

“That day, a part of my son was taken from me,” she said. “He’s 90 per cent the same,” but she told the judge, “I mourn that piece of him that’s gone — and then I feel guilty because I still have him.”

Speaking to Simpson directly, she told him that she hopes he feels sorry, not for her son — because she said she knows he feels sorry about getting caught — but for his own mother, who will have to see him in prison.

“Your mother didn’t deserve this,” she told Simpson. “I hope you take this four-year prison sentence and I hope you learn from it.”

Simpson’s lawyer, Mike Mandelcorn, alluded to a suggestion in his client’s pre-sentence report that Simpson doesn’t appreciate the gravity of what he’s done. However, he told the judge Simpson really is remorseful, but posited that his involvement in the drug subculture prevented him from giving it proper expression.

Justice Letourneau asked if theft was the only reason behind the attacks, and Skerkowski told him he would have heard more about motive had there been a trial. In the case of the 17-year-old, he said, he would have heard there was grudge involved but didn’t elaborate.

Letourneau, in sentencing Simpson, observed that his early upbringing, as described in his pre-sentence report, “was very unfortunate, to say the least,” and as bad as any he’s seen. Mandelcorn spoke of both Simpson and his mother being subjected to violence by his client’s father.

“But you committed these offences as an adult,” the judge told Simpson, and he said Simpson had to know the potential for catastrophic injury or death as he struck the younger teen with his bat.

“You didn’t save him,” he added. “Something saved him and it wasn’t you.”

Justice Letourneau said: “It seems to be, in terms of the level of violence, totally disproportionate to what might have fuelled the attacks.”

He told Simpson, “in general, I see some remorse.” But he also observed that Simpson’s younger victim “and his family have to deal with the fallout of what you did to him for the rest of his life — and that’s not fair.”

He told Simpson “an argument could be made this should be more than four [years].”

He said he was bound by the joint recommendation of the lawyers, however. The Supreme Court has set the bar incredibly high for a judge to set aside such joint submissions, he told those present, because “they want judges to shut up and do what the lawyers tell them.”

syanagisawa@postmedia.com