By Keith Lacey
A Sudbury man who chased down a group of youths he mistakenly thought were making jokes about him and then assaulted them was given a 14-month jail sentence Thursday.
Bradley Burleigh, 32, pleaded guilty Feb. 5 to one count of aggravated assault and a second count of assault with a weapon against a second young victim.
Burleigh?s accomplice, who was involved in the violent assault against both victims, was never found by police.
Court heard Burleigh and a male friend were walking along Notre Dame Avenue around 4 am June 2, 2000.
They approached a group of four young men near a parking lot. Two of the youths were involved in telling a joke, which Burleigh believed was made against him, even though both young men insisted it wasn?t.
Burleigh proceeded to hit one man with something in his hand, described in court as the butt end of a knife, and then kicked and punched the 22-year-old man in the face, knocking him unconscious. The victim suffered numerous bruises and cuts near his face area and numbness in his legs, said assistant Crown attorney Anne Kendall.
The second young victim, age 18, was also knocked unconscious by Burleigh and his accomplice and this victim suffered a severe cut to his lip and another cut to his forehead.
Both victims were taken to hospital and needed medical treatment. The victim with the cut lip will suffer from numbness to part of his lip for the rest of his life.
At the scene, Burleigh did show concern for the state of health of the first victim and told his other two friends to take him home, but the Crown believes this was just to avoid getting police involved, said Kendall.
When police arrived, they asked Burleigh, who had his hands behind his back, to expose his hands and he refused, forcing officers to draw their weapons and take him down at gunpoint, said Kendall.
Defence counsel Robert Beckett said Burleigh wasn?t trying to evade police and was trying to help one of the victims into an ambulance just before he was arrested.
Burleigh was prohibited from owning or possessing any prohibited weapon or firearm for 10 years and ordered to submit a DNA sample for a national crime data bank.
