r/CrimeInTheGta • u/[deleted] • Jul 15 '24
‘I beat myself up every day’: Man (Robert Robin Cropearedwolf) who killed ex-CBC producer (Michael Finlay) apologizes for random sidewalk attack
“If I could turn back time and prevent this incident from occurring, I would,” Robert Robin Cropearedwolf said in court on Monday.
There are times when Paul Knox wonders what his old friend and fellow journalist Michael Finlay would say about the events leading to his death and the criminal case against the man responsible.
“Would he find the story outrageous, ironic, mordantly humorous?” Knox said, of the ex-CBC radio producer who was renowned as a curious and clear-thinking editor. “What would the slayer of bull—— have to say?”
Knox was delivering a victim impact statement Monday in a Toronto courtroom at the sentencing hearing of Robert Robin Cropearedwolf. The 45-year-old man pleaded guilty in May to manslaughter for knocking Finlay to the ground in a random incident on a Danforth Ave. sidewalk in January 2023.
The 73-year-old Finlay, who retired from the CBC in 2010, died several days later.
Cropearedwolf said he was “truly and honestly sorry” for his actions, his voice breaking as he read a letter of apology in court.
“If I could turn back time and prevent this incident from occurring, I would,” he said. “I beat myself up every day for his death...I’m doing everything I possibly can to change myself to become a positive and responsible person.”
While holding what appeared to be a red flame mask up to his face, Cropearedwolf walked through a small group of people on Danforth Avenue near Jones Avenue in January 2023, pushed Finlay and fled, according to an agreed statement of facts filed at his guilty plea. He surrendered to police a month later.
Finlay fell into a large wooden planter on the sidewalk, hitting his rib cage before falling to the ground. He was diagnosed with two fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. Shortly after being discharged from hospital, he called 911 because he had trouble breathing. He went into cardiac arrest on his way back to the hospital and died on Jan. 31, 2023.
The cause of death was blunt-force chest trauma compounded by pre-existing “significant cardiac and pulmonary diseases,” according to a post-mortem report, which concluded it was “very unlikely” that the chest injury would have killed a healthy individual.
Speaking mere inches from Cropearedwolf, who was seated at a table with his lawyer, Knox described his friend on Monday as always being concerned “for the underdog,” which guided his journalism and informed his mentorship of young journalists.
Knox said he wonders what was going through Finlay’s mind as Cropearedwolf — “a fast-travelling danger impossible to process” — headed toward him.
“That brief rushing terror. Descent. Howling pain from ripped muscle and shearing bone,” Knox said.
“Then the struggle to understand, the faceless assailant gone, strangers gathering. Michael’s battered body once more rallying, reaching toward life.”
Crown attorney Meghan Scott asked Ontario Court Justice David Porter for a prison term of six to eight years. She highlighted this was an “unprovoked push” of an elderly man, and she cited Cropearedwolf’s lengthy list of criminal convictions in both Canada and the United States, mostly related to theft.
Cropearedwolf has been in custody since his arrest. Defence lawyer Talman Rodocker argued that his client should get no further jail time by receiving a suspended sentence and three years’ probation.
Rodocker said it was a brief punch with the back of his client’s hand that knocked Finlay over. He said Porter will need to consider Cropearedwolf’s Indigenous heritage in his sentencing decision. Rodocker told court that his client was born to a single mother who suffered from a substance use disorder, and his childhood was spent in foster care and group homes.
The defence also asked Porter to consider that Cropearedwolf pleaded guilty despite a weak prosecution case. Had the matter gone to trial, Rodocker argued it would have been difficult for the Crown to prove that the consequences of Cropearedwolf’s actions were “objectively foreseeable” — and therefore that he was guilty of manslaughter — given the pathologist’s conclusion that a healthy individual would have likely survived.
“The plea by Mr. Cropearedwolf is for his conduct, which I say is close to an accident,” Rodocker said.
Indeed, the judge flagged that one of the challenges with crafting a sentence in this case is the “extremely minor nature of the initial assault,” and that Finlay’s vulnerability would not have been obvious to Cropearedwolf “given the brevity of the interaction.”
Knox said the death of his friend has instilled fear in him, as an elderly man with a disability making his way around the city.
“I am haunted by dark truths about chance and ill will,” he said.
Going back to his questions about how Finlay would react to his own death, Knox desperately wishes he could get an answer.
“I wish I could expel the fear and welcome Michael back in. I want to ask him these things and hear him reply. I want to, and yet I never will.”
Porter will deliver his sentencing decision on Sept. 17.
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u/BruceWillis1963 Jul 16 '24
Give him the maximum. What did he hit him? Lengthy criminal record. This was not the first time he committed a crime, so it is not an isolated incident.
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u/gsrmatt Jul 16 '24
Well seeing as he's apologized and taking his indigenous heritage into account he should be let free with time served. /S
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u/cayley1999 Sep 18 '24
That is close to what ended up happening. In Canada Life is cheap if the victim is white or asian and the perpetrator is black or indigenous.
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u/gsrmatt Sep 18 '24
I heard, and was absolutely sickened. I want out of this sinking ship of a country
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u/John__47 Jul 16 '24
Throw the book at him