Defense and Crown prosecutors presented conflicting views of the young man about to be sentenced for manslaughter in the death of Langley’s Carson Crimeni in court on Friday.
The 21-year-old, who cannot be named because he was still 17 when Carson, 14, died in a Walnut Grove park from a massive drug overdose, is facing a three year custody and supervision order.
With Carson’s father, mother, and paternal grandfather in the courtroom, the offender offered an apology as part of the defence’s sentencing arguments.
“There is nothing I can say or do that will make things better or bring Carson back,” he began, reading in a steady voice.
He said he was deeply ashamed and haunted by his actions.
“I wholeheartedly apologize to the Cremni family for the endless suffering I have caused,” he said. He also apologized to the community, his own family, and to Carson himself.
The offender has pleaded guilty and admitted to selling a dose of MDMA to Carson at a local skate park on Aug. 7, 2019. When the boy asked for a second dose some time later, the offender gave him a much, much larger dose than Carson had requested.
Carson believed he had ingested the equivalent of three “caps” of MDMA, or about 0.3 grams. In fact he may have received as much as 13 caps in total that day. An autopsy revealed blood test results consistent with having consumed about 10 times an average single dose. The overdose caused his body temperature to spike and he died of heart failure, despite attempts to revive him.
A lengthy police investigation led to manslaughter charges last year, and as a trial date approached this fall, the accused entered a guilty plea.
Crown prosecutors have asked Justice Kathleen Ker to impose a two-year jail term, to be served in adult provincial prison, with a year of supervised release. Defense lawyers have asked the judge for 12 to 18 months in prison and the remainder on release.
After the apology was read in court, Aron Crimeni, Carson’s father, said that to him, the apology sounded insincere.
“It just seems like convenient timing,” he said of an apology only delivered before a judge is set to sentence the man to prison.
Asked if he could accept the apology, he said “How can I?”
Aron had delivered an emotional victim impact statement the day before during the first part of the sentencing hearing, breaking down crying as he spoke of how Carson’s loss had left him depressed and isolated, unable to celebrate holidays because the reminded him too much of his son.
READ MORE: Offender will get some jail time for Carson Crimeni death: judge
“I just feel like there’s no excuse for what happened,” said Chantell Griffiths, Carson’s mother.
Defense lawyer Michael Beckett spent much of the morning Friday arguing for the lower sentence, saying that his client hit rock bottom the day he caused Carson’s death, and has made a 180-degree turnaround since then.
“Obviously, this has attracted a lot of attention, heartbreak in the community,” Beckett said.
He noted that unlike many young offenders, his client was raised in a normal home, without any evidence that he was exposed to abuse, crime, or addictions at any time during his childhood.
He was diagnosed with ADHD and struggled in school, and by Grade 4 was beginning to show “oppositional” traits. He was poor at most subjects, but he was good at math, art, and electronics.
Beckett pointed to a major incident in his client’s life when he was assaulted by two men in January 2017. The offender, then 15, was kicked unconscious and left outside in the snow until friends found him.
After that, his family says he was prone to angry outbursts, inattention, and had difficulty expressing himself. He had nightmares and anxiety, and while his family took him to doctors, he resisted medical treatment.
Multiple reports by mental health professionals prepared before the trial looked into whether the offender had suffered a traumatic brain injury, and Beckett said it was uncertain if he had.
One report suggested that his problems after the attack were a result of a combination of ADHD, the traumatic event itself, a mood disorder, and substance abuse issues.
Whatever the cause, the attack sparked the offender to extensively self-medicate with illegal drugs. He had already tried alcohol before that, but after he added cannabis use and heavy daily use of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Over the next two years, as he also became what the Crown described as a “fairly sophisticated” local drug dealer, he tried nitrous, cocaine, crack, benzodiazepines, and oxycontin. By the time he was 17 he was using LSD heavily on a weekly basis as well.
Following Carson’s death, Beckett said his client immediately stopped using and dealing illegal drugs.
After finding out the younger teen had died, the offender told his mother, and she took him to the Langley RCMP, where he made a statement acknowledging he had given Carson some drugs the day of his death.
Shortly after that, he left town, to stay with his father in Alberta.
“People were understandably angry, but they were also vengeful,” said Beckett. People in the community knew his client had given Carson drugs, and he was facing death threats.
The offender’s mother sold her Langley home and now lives in the Fraser Valley.
Matt Stacey, one of the Crown prosecutors, argued that although the offender did speak to the police and admit he sold Carson drugs the day after the event, that should not be considered too much of a mitigating factor in sentencing.
In his first statement to the RCMP, the offender said that he had given Carson about five caps of MDMA, and had only given him drugs on one occasion that day. Neither was true.
In addition, there were many witnesses who had seen him with Carson at the skate park.
“His motive that day does not appear to have been benign,” Stacey said.
He suggested that the offender was “trying to get ahead of the story, as it were.”
There were rumours, which the offender had heard, that other people might have also sold Carson drugs that day. However, that was untrue. All the MDMA Carson ingested that day was sold to him by the offender.
Beckett talked about how his client has been living a productive life since the incident in which he caused Carson’s death.
He has the support of his family, is working towards getting a high school degree, and has been working for a landscaping company. Multiple family members as well as his boss provided character reference letters for the court.
Justice Ker noted on Thursday that the offender will spend some time behind bars, but how much is to be determined based on this sentencing hearing.
The court will reconvene on Thursday, Oct. 26 at 10 a.m. for her to hand down a sentence in the case.
