CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. - A 20-year-old man who stabbed his victim 14 times at a Charlottetown apartment in a dispute over a pair of headphones is heading to a federal prison.
Chase Joseph Douglas Aslantogmus appeared before Judge John Douglas in provincial court in Charlottetown Friday for sentencing after previously pleading guilty to attempted murder.
Douglas sentenced Aslantogmus to serve 37.5 months and with credit for time spent in custody since his arrest in September 2017, he was left with two years on his sentence.
As Crown attorney Lisa Goulden made her submissions Friday, she told the court Aslantogmus took the law into his own hands.
“In this case, an argument over headphones nearly got a young man killed,” she said.
Those headphones belonged to the victim who let someone who was friends with Aslantogmus borrow them in September.
After the friend didn’t return the headphones, the victim’s girlfriend contacted Aslantogmus, saying she didn’t want to go to the police.
She told Aslantogmus she wanted him to help find the headphones.
“He took that as a threat,” Goulden said
Aslantogmus went to where the victim was staying, threw a bat at the victim, hitting him in the head, and stabbed him 14 times, even as the man tried to crawl away.
He only stopping stabbing the victim because he had hurt his hand prior to the incident and it started to get sore.
The court heard Aslantogmus told police he was aiming for the victim’s throat.
“My intent was to kill him,” Aslantogmus said.
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Goulden said that at the time, Aslantogmus didn’t show any remorse and told police it would be a lesson for the victim who would remember what happens if he mouths off again.
The victim spent more than a week in hospital with injuries that included a punctured lung and a stab wound to his face that was close to one of his eyes.
Goulden said it was just by luck that the victim didn’t die.
During Friday’s proceedings, the court heard details of Aslantogmus’s history of serious mental health issues, including a stay at the Peel Children’s Centre in Moncton, which is a facility for children.
He aged out of the facility at 19 and moved back to P.E.I.
The court heard Aslantogmus had behavioural issues in his life before then, including setting a fire in his home when he was four.
Aslantogmus has a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder after suffering abuse as a child and he is on anti-psychotic medication.
Douglas called it a “sad and troubled upbringing”.
Aslantogmus will serve his sentence in a federal prison and will be on probation for three years after his release, during which time he must undergo counselling or treatment as directed.
He will be on electronic monitoring, if directed, and is banned from contact with the victim and the victim’s girlfriend.
Douglas said he hoped the priority for the Correctional Service of Canada will be rehabilitation and programming designed for mental health issues.
Aslantogmus will be under a 10-year weapon prohibition and must provide a DNA sample for the national databank.
