Man sentenced to life in prison for killing an Ethiopian in Canada

Richard Watts, Times Colonist

Randal (Randy) Bailey was sentenced yesterday to life in prison with no parole for 12 years for the knife attack that left two men injured and Bruk Abera dead.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Macaulay noted that even with the life prison sentence, Bailey is only 23 and will have chances. But Abera, Macaulay said, will have none of those chances.

“Mr. Bailey has a future and opportunities if he eventually rehabilitates himself,” said Macaulay. Abera also “had hopes, opportunities and a future, now there is none.”

Bailey was convicted on Nov. 1, 2007, of second-degree murder for killing Abera. He was also convicted of two counts of aggravated assault for slashing and stabbing two of Abera’s friends, charges for which he received five years each to run concurrently.

The charges were all laid in connection with an early morning altercation on June 20, 2006, at an apartment at 2647 Graham St.

Bailey, armed with a knife and lurking in the elevator surprised Abera and his two friends, Victor Karangwa, 22, and Omar Ali, 19, as the doors opened.

Turning to flee, Karangwa was slashed across the face. Abera was stabbed in the back hard enough to sever a rib before the blade entered his chest. The knife-wielding Bailey then faced off with Ali in front of the apartment slashing and stabbing him before breaking it off and fleeing.

The jury heard the whole rampage began with Bailey banging and buzzing the apartment of Karangwa’s sister with a bizarre story of people after him for the diamond inset in one of his teeth. The young woman refused to let him in and called her brother for help when Bailey wouldn’t leave.

Macaulay noted Bailey and the three men had not just one altercation but two, the first ending when all four left the apartment.

But Bailey came back and continued buzzing the apartment and even asked the sister to call her brother back. He then managed to secret himself into the building, and by then had already armed himself with a kitchen knife pilfered from another apartment dweller.

For Macaulay this indicated the knife attack was, to some extent, planned.

The planning, the refusal to disengage, and the senselessness of the attack were some of the factors, Macaulay cited as reasons for setting Bailey’s parole eligibility at 12 years instead of the minimum 10.

“The level of violence was not only senseless but chilling,” said Macaulay.

After sentence was passed Abera’s mother, who now lives in Toronto, sobbed in grief but still managed to cry out thanks to the 30-odd of Bruk’s friends who had packed the courtroom.

“Thank you everybody,” said Ati Nigussie. “Oh, I miss him. I miss him.”

Family friend Jin-Sun Yoon said one sad irony is that Nigussie considered moving to Toronto years ago where there is a bigger Ethiopian community. But she stayed in Victoria because she thought it would be a safer place for her son and daughter.

Even the night he was killed Abera wasn’t really involved in the conflict. But he volunteered to drive over to help Karangwa’s sister because he didn’t drink and it would be safer for them all.

“Bruk was a really, really special person,” said Yoon.

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