Deadly Assault

"Sean Murphy was a man at the wrong place at the wrong time and he lost his life for no reason. 

"It was violence that was unprovoked, reckless, brutal and senseless."  Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny

Justice Ratushny also felt reason to call into question the sincerity of Mohamed Jama Yusuf's apology.  And then she sentenced him for "violently and callously", mortally attacking a 51-year-old man who was inebriated and unable to defend himself.

After Mohamed Jama Yusuf brutally beat 51-year-old Sean Murphy to insensibility he walked off, high-fiving a friend at the bar where he had been drinking.  He obviously proved his masculine prowess by kicking and stamping on the slighter Sean Murphy, a stranger to him, and too drunk to repel his attacker.

And then, later on, when Mr. Yusuf returned to Edmonton where he was from, he indulged in some bragging about "stomping an old man in Ottawa".

Mr. Murphy died in hospital three weeks after he was attacked just after 12:00 a.m. in the parking of a store near Merivale Road and Shillington Avenue.  He died of pneumonia occasioned by the brain injury caused by the viciousness of the injuries he had received, meted out to him by Mr. Yusuf who rejoiced in his "stomping an old man in Ottawa".

It was, declared Justice Ratushny "particularly repugnant" that one of Mr. Yusuf's friends, Abdulhakim Mohammed, took the opportunity of Mr. Murphy convulsing and unconscious to go through the man's pockets to take possession of whatever he could find there, after he'd been brutalized and fallen off his bicycle.

For punching a vulnerable cyclist in the head for no particular reason, then completing the assault by stomping and kicking him as he lay unconscious on the pavement, and ultimately causing his death as a result of the injuries sustained, Mohamed Jama Yusuf was sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison.

A little less than 6-12 years remain for Mr. Yusuf to serve out his sentence, given credit for time already served.  That's the price that society enacts as a disciplinary measure for viciously taking an innocent life.