by Dan Laxer
The Suburban
Sergio Yanes Preciado, the man who beat up a Hasidic Jewish father in front of his three daughters, has been found not criminally responsible due a mental defect or illness.
The 23-year-old was arrested last month after video surfaced of him beating up the victim before walking away and tossing the victim’s kipah into a puddle. The victim’s three little girls, who witnessed the attack, can be heard screaming. The attack occurred in Dickie Moore Park in the Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension borough.
Friday, September 12 should have been Preciado’s bail hearing. He had been held at the Philippe Pinel institute for a 30-day psychiatric evaluation. The report was supposed to have been presented in court on Friday so the judge could decide if the man is fit to stand trial.
But after a full day of hearings, the report was not presented.
At around 4:40 p.m., Crown Prosecutor Isabelle Major and Preciado’s defense lawyer Gracinda Fernandes let the judge know that they needed more time to go over the report, and asked that the case be held over to Monday.
Major told The Suburban at the time that she had spoken with the victim to bring him up to date with the new elements in the case and, given that the Pinel report is in French, made sure that she translated the details properly and that he fully understood. The victim, Major said, is her top priority.
Sources tell The Suburban that the police had recommended to the prosecutor that the attack be treated as a hate crime, which Major did say would be brought up before the court. But she also talked about the prospect of the Preciado’s mental illness, which the preliminary criminologist’s report and Preciado’s family alleged. Should the case go to trial, Major explained, it would be up to Preciado if he would want to use that as a defense.
On Monday the judge said that the psychiatric report shows Preciado was incapable of understanding what he did due to delusion and schizophrenia.
Zev Feldman, the victim’s brother-in-law, says the family’s reaction to the ruling is mixed; it is not known when the court will make a decision, or what that decision will be. Preciado has been remanded into custody at a mental health facility until the court can be updated on his status. However, that said, he has been ordered to stay away from the victim, and from the victim’s family. If that means that he could be released soon, it’s worrying. “You have to remember,” Feldman says, “the attacker and the victim don’t live that far from one another. In fact, he was arrested literally a few blocks away from where the victim lives. So, if he is released, and the kids see him, this can undo five months of therapy.”
The victim was actually at the courthouse, but did not enter the courtroom where the hearing was taking place. Facing his attacker would have been too hard. But he had written a victim impact statement which was read into the court record.
Feldman says there was a lot of contradictory testimony as to whether Preciado was under the influence of marijuana or not, and whether he knew that what he tossed into the water was a kipah.
Rabbi Saul Emanuel, the executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, said that the ruling “is a profound miscarriage of justice.”
“It is not punishment. It is not deterrence. It is a bureaucratic evasion dressed in clinical language, and it will do nothing to reassure a community already under siege from rising antisemitic violence.”