A Saskatoon provincial court judge imposed an eight-year prison sentence on Friday for a crime he called “cruel and horrific.”
Kyle Landon Neapetung tied up Brenden Peters in a basement and tortured him for five days. He hit Peters on the head, cut and stabbed him, burnt him with a torch and carved his gang’s initials all over the man’s body.
This was “gang-related revenge on an innocent person,” Judge Barry Singer said in his decision.
Neapetung, 29, pleaded guilty to unlawful confinement and aggravated assault for the attack, which began on March 30, 2016 and lasted until April 3. Court heard Peters was later able to escape from the trunk of a car after it crashed into a median. He ran to St. Paul’s Hospital, where he saw Neapetung, who told him not to say anything.
When police arrested Neapetung on the street later that month, he was carrying a sawed-off rifle and ammunition. He pleaded guilty to weapons charges, which resulted in a one-year sentence on top of the seven years he received for the assault and confinement.
The Crown argued for a nine-year sentence, saying there is no other Saskatchewan case involving this level of violence and length of confinement. Singer agreed with prosecutor Frank Impey’s description of the crime as “incomprehensible to most people.”
The weapons offences are also serious because they are gang-related and “demonstrate that the accused had adopted a violent lifestyle that was potentially dangerous to others,” Singer said.
Defence lawyer Lori Johnstone-Clarke argued for a total sentence of seven years on all the charges. She asked Singer to take into account the trauma Neapetung and his family suffered as a result of colonization, referred to as Gladue factors.
Singer said those factors include Neapetung being neglected and physically abused by his mother, a residential school survivor who was unable to parent. Neapetung turned to drugs and joined a gang, resulting in a prison sentence in 2013.
“Gladue factors directly relate to his committing these crimes,” Singer said. “(They) assist us in explaining and understanding his horrific and violent behaviour in this case.”
He was doing well until 2016, when his mother died and he returned to gang life, Singer noted.
He recommended Neapetung take programming to learn how to cope with grief, anger and anxiety, as referred to in a pre-sentence report.
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