Attack lands man in jail; Mentally ill man found guilty of assault inside mosque

Posted By Sue Yanagisawa

September 1, 2007 A 54-year-old man with mental-health problems and a history of violence was back before a Kingston court again last week, charged with an armed assault inside the Islamic Centre on Sydenham Road only a week after he'd been released from jail and placed on probation.

Johnnie F. Baylis, pleaded guilty in front of Justice Judith Beaman to assaulting a man in the centre, threatening to use a knife during the assault and two violations of a recent probation order.

"That's very disturbing behaviour - in a place of prayer - and behaviour that has to be discouraged and sanctioned," Beaman told him. She gave the former Windsor resident credit for 48 days he'd already spent in pretrial custody and sentenced him to six months in jail with a recommendation that he be allowed to serve it in the St. Lawrence Valley Treatment Centre in Brockville. She also imposed a two-year probation order with conditions that require Baylis to work "actively" with mental-health services and accept assessment and treatment for anger management and substance abuse.

Assistant Crown attorney Elisabeth Foxton told the judge that Baylis was placed on probation for a year on June 28, after he pled guilty to a bizarre attack on a Kingston pizza parlour employee. On that occasion, Baylis, a large, balding man, walked into the pizza parlour between 9:30 and 10 p.m., and grabbed the victim by the throat and punched him without a word of explanation.

The victim fled to the nearby Red Lobster Restaurant and called police as soon as Baylis let go of him, leaving the business unattended with his assailant inside. The court was told that Baylis, meanwhile, notwithstanding that he has five prior convictions for robbery, never touched the cash register or attempted to steal anything before leaving. The only damage that could later be attributed to him, was to a mail box by the front door.

Police later arrested him at a Bayswater Place apartment and he spent 35 days in custody before pleading to the charges in front of Justice Rommel Masse. At the time, he claimed that he didn't go into the pizza parlour intending to hurt the man, but wanted him to know that he'd been "disrespected" the previous night when a drink was spilled on him.

Eight days after his release, Foxton said a member of the Islamic Centre's congregation noticed Baylis inside the building rifling through some luggage and told him to stop. Instead, Baylis moved to another area and began going through more bags. The man again told him to stop and ended up chasing Baylis into a washroom and cornering him. Baylis turned on his pursuer and punched him, then ran into the kitchen, where he grabbed a knife and threatened to use it on his initial victim and another man.

When police arrived, Foxton said Baylis told them that "he was starting a karate school inside the mosque," and planned to open a cemetery on the grounds.

The victim, she said, had received a lump on his head during his confrontation with Baylis, as well as bruise and a small cut on his arm. But he told police he thought he could have sustained the cut blocking Baylis' punches.

When he was in court previously, Baylis claimed that he's been diagnosed with both schizophrenia and a bipolar disorder. His lawyer, Dan Scully, confirmed to Justice Beaman that "there are ongoing mental health concerns," but wasn't specific about the nature of his client's problems.

"I'd like to apologize to the court," a seemingly contrite Baylis told the judge. "The knife wasn't used to attack the individual," he said. "It was thrown into a table. I would never use violence on one of my brothers."

In poking through the luggage, he began to tell her, he "just wanted the individual to understand he couldn't leave dirty clothes lying around." Beaman stopped him from continuing and reviewed his bad behaviour that day for him.

She said she found it "very disturbing" that a man with Baylis's record for crimes of violence, including two assaults causing bodily harm, was back in this kind of trouble only eight days after receiving probation.

Foxton had asked for a six to nine month sentence, "to help get him into St. Lawrence Valley [Treatment Centre]," and Scully reluctantly joined in the recommendation, hoping for the same outcome. He suggested he'd have asked for a much shorter sentence except, "they won't take anyone, I understand, with less than a six-to-nine month sentence."