(JESSICA WALLACE / iNFOnews.ca)
September 16, 2013 - 5:27 PM
KAMLOOPS - A man serving time at Kamloops Regional Correctional Centre admitted to stabbing another inmate and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault today in B.C. Supreme Court.
Derek Baptiste pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of aggravated assault. Crown prosecutor Tim Livingston said it would be difficult to prove that Baptiste knew or ought to have known his actions could have caused death.
"Mr. Baptiste has some significant cognitive difficulty," Livingston said.
Baptiste was in remand at the prison Sept. 6, 2012 when the unit went into lockdown and he stabbed an inmate multiple times.
"(The man) was taken to Royal Inland Hospital and treated for a number of stab wounds," Livingston said.
Defence lawyer Gurpreet Gill said Johnson was an acquaintance of a man who had shot his brother.
"There was a lot of bad blood," she said.
Gill said Baptiste is a product of a 'tragic' background, sexually abused when he was younger and his parents were victims of native residential school abuse. Baptiste is currently facing a three-year sentence for a series of break and enters in Penticton. The Crown is seeking a one-year prison sentence for the stabbing.
"That sentence should be served consecutively," Livingston said.
He said without a consecutive sentence, inmates serving time would have no deterrence from committing further crimes.
"These are disparate offences, separate in time."
The judge has reserved her decision for a date yet to be determined.
To contact a reporter for this story, email: jwallace@infotelnews.ca, call: (250) 319-7494 or tweet: @jess__wallace.
News from © iNFOnews, 2013