The Crown wants a one-year sentence for a man who pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm in a 2020 Richmond Centre Mall stranger attack where a man suffered 16 stab wounds.
Steven Alexander Romine-Le, 28, is one of four people charged in connection with the Nov. 1, 2020 incident where a man coming out of the mall was attacked with a knife and baton.
In asking for the year sentence and one year’s probation, Crown prosecutor Janelle Khan told Vancouver Provincial Court Judge Nancy Adams the victim received four stab wounds in the head, 10 in the back and two in his chest.
Adams also heard the man was beaten with a baton.
He suffered a cut to his liver and a punctured lung.
Khan said the victim did not know the attackers.
“The attack was unprovoked,” she said.
Khan also asked for a year’s probation at the end of the jail time.
Defence lawyer Connor Muldoon said Romine-Le had a difficult childhood with parents having substance abuse issues and strangers in and out of his home constantly.
He said the Saulteau First Nation member does not remember the incident having been intoxicated on alcohol and methamphetamine at the time.
Still, Muldoon told Adams, Romine-Le has worked hard to turn his life around since the incident.
He said Romine-Le has paid for his own counselling, is now employed and has been clean and sober for a year.
Muldoon asked for a conditional sentence order and probation.
Romine-Le was charged with three counts of aggravated assault, robbery and attempted murder by committing aggravated assault.
The assault causing bodily harm charge to which Romine-Le pleaded guilty July 21 is a lesser included charge for aggravated assault.
Khan said the other charges would be stayed.
Adams is expected to pass sentence in January.
Second conviction
Romine-Le was one of three people charged in connection with the case.
On June 28, Vancouver Provincial Court Judge Harbans Dhillon gave Charles Norman Teneycke, 39, an 18-month conditional sentence after pleading guilty two weeks earlier to aggravated assault. He was also charged with robbery but that charge was stayed.
A woman was charged in the mall attack as well as another with Romine-Le but those charges were stayed.
She and another woman, also Nov. 1, were charged with assault of a woman in Vancouver. Those charges were also stayed.
Both women, along with Romine-Le, were also charged with another Nov. 1, 2020 attack on a man. Those charges were also stayed.
