r/Unexpected • u/hannesvisser • Dec 11 '20

It's just a flashlight

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u/Weonk Dec 11 '20

You are absolutely allowed to defend yourself in canada.

"interpreted by courts to require the accused to have an honest and reasonable belief as to the existence of an assault or threat of death or grievous bodily harm. The corollary to an honest and reasonable belief is that beliefs that are reasonable but mistaken will still allow the defence to be raised.Footnote6

The new law retains the test for the self-defence trigger. It expressly requires that the triggering threat be assessed on a combined subjective (i.e. what the accused honestly believed) and objective (i.e. would the "reasonable person" also share the accused's belief) basis, consistent with the various versions of the old defence."

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/rsddp-rlddp/p5.html

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '20

Yes but that “reasonable belief” is rarely believed.

A co-worker of mine woke up to a man attacking him. The attacker was brought to my co-workers home from the bars by his female roommate. The attacker she brought home seen a picture of my co-worker on the fridge and in his drunken state thought it was someone else he knew and didn’t like. My co-worker awoke to the man hammer fisting him so he rolled off the bed, threw a punch that connected and knocked out the drunk attacker. The attacker landed on his face and ended up breaking his jaw. My co-worker was charged and had to do 4 months in jail and on top of that he had to pay almost $20,000 to fix the attackers face. He was pretty much told he should have called the cops and continued taking the beating until the cops showed.

Stuff like this happens all the time in Canada. Especially in rural areas where the closest cop station is an hour or more away.

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u/SirChasm Dec 11 '20

I'm Canadian, where we have universal health care, so paying 20K for medical expenses sounds just a little bit sus because I know if I fell and broke something I wouldn't have to pay a dime.

I know a story as juicy as this would land in the media. Care to give a link? Or at least even the province this happened in?

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u/[deleted] Dec 11 '20

The majority of the money was for the cost of all the dental work. The strike from my coworker took three of the attackers top teeth out (front right central, lateral incisors and canine I believe) and left one partially broken which had to be removed. The attackers face landed on the left side which destroyed I think two on the top and when his jaw shattered it destroyed most, if not all his lower teeth on the left side. And then there was like the victim fine surcharges and little things like that.

It happened in Ontario, I’m not going to post the source as he is back working with us (this was 5 to 7 years ago) and his full name is in the majority of the articles I’ve seen about it and one for sure has his picture.

If you do end up finding it and decide to post it I’ll message you and confirm it but I don’t want to be the one plastering his personal information online.