Tyler Greening was given 20 months house arrest on Thursday at provincial court in St. John’s. (Danny Arsenault/CBC)
A man who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for his role in the gang beating of a teenager at Prince of Wales Collegiate in St. John’s was sentenced Thursday to 20 months house arrest and one year of probation.
Tyler Greening, who was 18 at the time of the attack in 2023, also has conditions including an order to keep the peace, report to a supervisor, submit to electronic monitoring, attend programming, have zero contact with any of the other offenders and to stay on his property and within Newfoundland and Labrdaor unless given permission by the court.
Greening entered his plea in April, admitting to helping four other teens bludgeon a 16-year-old victim.
The court heard Greening was the driver of the vehicle the group used to flee after the attack, but he didn’t participate in the attack itself.
The attack was planned and deliberate, using a bat and the blunt end of a hatchet covered in racial slurs and swastikas, the court heard. The victim was left with multiple skull fractures and brain bleeding.
Greening left with the attackers and helped them ditch their weapons. The vehicle, owned by Greening’s father, was abandoned.
Greening eventually turned himself in and helped police investigate the four attackers.
Greening’s lawyer, Robert Hoskins, asked for house arrest and a lengthy probation for his client, noting Greening took responsibility for his actions, had shown remorse and was expecting a child.
Prosecutors asked for 18 to 24 months in prison.
At his last court appearance in September, Greening offered a lengthy and moving speech in which he disclosed the aftermath of the attacks led him to consider suicide.
“Every day I have felt regret and shame,” he said at the time. “Not once was I aware that things could have escalated so quickly into something that nearly ended … an innocent boy’s life.”
Four others involved in the attack, all minors who can’t be identified, have also pleaded guilty to the assault. Two received 18 months in juvenile detention, and the other two 24 months — the maximum sentence for a charge less than murder for a minor.
Greening’s sentencing comes on the heels of two violent attacks in Mount Pearl last week, in which police say a gang of teenagers brutally attacked two victims. Six teens, aged 13 to 16, have now been arrested in connection with those assaults, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said Wednesday.
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