Former manager of the Red Lion Inn, Zhi Wei “Wally” Meng, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault Wednesday (April 9) and got a suspended sentence the same day.
He was charged after assaulting five different staff members, attacking them with a pair of scissors on the afternoon of Nov. 17, 2012.
Meng was in and out of psychosis during the attack occurred in areas all throughout the hotel, beginning in the Jade Fountain Restaurant, then in the kitchen, and then at the hotel’s front desk.
Crown counsel sought 18 to 24 months in jail while Meng’s awyer Steve Kelliher sought the suspended sentence eventually handed down by the judge.
“It’s a unique case, neither the prosecutor nor I could find a precedent that any way approximated these multiple counts of aggravated assault with the offender,” Kelliher said. “It’s the right result. I think as a people we can be proud of this.”
He argued that the moral culpability in this case was at the lowest end of the spectrum.
“If someone is angry or jealous or vengeful … theres’ a pretty high degree of moral culpability. They’ve intended to do it,” he said. “The situation like this by reason of this mental disorder, it is very difficult to say to what degree the Wally Meng that was present in that courtroom for sentencing was the Wally Meng that committed the offence.”
Meng’s suspended sentence includes three years of probation and 14 conditions including to provide statutory DNA sample, continue to participate in psychiatric counselling and attend the Forensic Phsyciatric Centre and a one-year curfew.