Second guilty verdict in Dopwell-Bailey murder

By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

Andrei Donet, 21, was convicted last week of second-degree murder in the death of 16-year-old Jannai Dopwell-Bailey in Côte des Neiges in 2021. Dopwell-Bailey was stabbed repeatedly outside his school on Van Horne across from Plamondon Métro station shortly after school on October 18, 2021, in what prosecutors described as a brazen act of violence in broad daylight, due to a rivalry between street gangs in the borough of CDN-NDG.

The victim was accosted in the neighbouring park by Andrei Donet, 18 at the time, and two other individuals, including one who was also convicted as a minor of second-degree murder. The victim was pepper sprayed and then chased towards his school where he was stabbed nearly a dozen times.

Last Monday outside the Coronation building, where Dopwell-Bailey’s high-school program is located, his family and community members gathered to pay tribute to the young man, and express relief at the guilty verdict, while advocating for a strict sentence. “I raised my son from the day he was born until he was 16 years old,” his mother Charla told reporters. “He was in school; he wasn’t in a gang,” she said, noting that such narratives around a victim perpetuate racist stereotypes.

The court will hear sentencing arguments later this month as jurors have recommended that Donet be eligible for parole after serving 12 years of his automatic life sentence. n

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