Another racist pleads guilty

A second teenager has changed his plea in connection with attacks on Chinese students earlier this month in Saint John. Jonathan Martin, 19, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to possession of a knife and damage to public property.

Students were assaulted two weekends in a row earlier in August, near the University of New Brunswick campus. The attacks terrified members of the city’s Chinese community. Summer Mu, a former University of New Brunswick student who lives in Saint John, says one victim in particular has been scarred by the experience. “She still cannot sleep at night, and so scared. She’s also thinking about if she should be back to China,” Mu said.

Now here is the strange part.  A man and his girlfriend walking on University Avenue late at night and heard footsteps running toward them from behind. When they turned, three young men stopped and apologized, saying they thought the couple were Chinese.  Martin was not charged with the attack on July 28, but he was with the group on Aug. 9 when they confronted the man and his girlfriend. The trio told the couple they were doing random beatings on Chinese students to scare them into going back home and to keep others from coming to Canada. They asked the man to join them, but he declined and called police when he got away from them.

Martin was not the one who did the talking when the trio approached the man on University Avenue, but he was present, said prosecutor Kelly Winchester. The witness told police all the young men had shaved heads and were carrying pieces of pipe.  When police arrived a short while later, they found the three young men, but they were not carrying any weapons. So after getting names and an address, they were sent on their way. But a short while later another officer found the pipes, a knife and spray paint under a car a few metres away from where they questioned the young men, so they were arrested at the address given.

The man that called police said he had recently started working with a Chinese student and had heard how scared the local community was because of the two attacks. He wanted to help, so he called police, said Winchester.  When Martin was arrested he told police he had not done anything like that before, and had only shaved his head that night. The police report indicated he still had shaving cream and bits of hair on his head, said Winchester.

This comes just one week after another teen pleaded guilty. The remaining teen, a 15-year-old, has been sent to the Miramichi Youth Detention Centre for a psychiatric evaluation. I can only hope that the sentencing is as brutal as the attacks were to the students.