Canada:Surprise pleas in killing of homeless man Paul Croutch

Surprise pleas in Moss Park killing

Two of three accused in attack on homeless man plead guilty to manslaughter in his death


Apr 18, 2008 04:30 AM
Rosie DiManno
Columnist

"What the hell happened last night?"

– Corp. Jeffrey Hall, the morning after a killing.

They bent their heads and wept, two ruined young men who admit beating a homeless person to death, an unresisting stranger, for no reason they can recall.

One remembers the episode through an alcoholic haze and does not disavow it, if purportedly mystified by his own brutality.

One claims to have no memory of the horrific incident at all, which provides a useful buffer against conscience.

A third – serious doubts raised about his involvement in the original, incomprehensible, staggeringly cruel assault on a recumbent street person – accepts culpability as an accessory after the fact.

They didn't mean to do murder – a common refrain from defendants – which was the charge originally levelled against the trio of army reservists in the unprovoked pounding that took the life of 59-year-old Paul Croutch in the early morning hours of Aug. 31, 2005 at Moss Park.

Following a preliminary hearing, the charges were knocked down to second-degree murder, plus assault causing bodily harm against a witness to the frenzied attack.

Yesterday – the triumvirate standing shoulder-to-shoulder – Hall and Brian Deganis pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter, as accepted by Crown Attorney Hank Goody, Mountaz Ibrahim to the accessory charge, all three going down on assault causing bodily harm against Valerie Valen, the woman who was booted and punched for trying to intervene.

And none of it makes any more sense now than it did nearly three years ago. Croutch – a fragile human being bundled in plastic bags against the rain – is dead, apparently because he drew the white-hot, booze-fuelled wrath of bullies with malice on the brain and an absence of pity in the heart.
go here for more
http://www.thestar.com/News/Columnist/article/415790