'I had a terrible, evil feeling inside of me,' man tells family of toddler he killed
CBC
A New Brunswick man says he's always fought against urges to hurt himself and others.
Growing up, his younger sister usually bore the brunt of his violence, Karrson Bennett told a Saint John court Wednesday during the final stages of his lengthy sentencing hearing after pleading guilty in March to second-degree murder.
Bennett, who turns 25 on Saturday, said he's tried to figure out why he killed a two-year-old boy by pushing a Ping-Pong ball into his throat, but he said he still doesn't understand why he did it.
"I had a terrible, evil feeling inside of me … and I let it overpower my body," Bennett said, reading from a prepared statement and facing the boy's family to deliver it. "It was something I never believed I could do.
"What I did was pure evil. It was an act of the devil. Every time I look in a mirror, I am so sick with disgust, with regret, and with so much hate."
Addressing several of them by name, beginning with the boy's mother and grandmother, he apologized "from the bottom of my heart."
He said they're in his prayers every day "and I will regret this for as long as I live."
Bennett said the boy, whose identity is protected by a court order, didn't deserve what happened to him. He said not a day goes by that he doesn't think of him and miss him.
"I hate myself more than you could ever begin to hate me," he told the boy's family.
He said he wished he could go back in time and trade his life for the boy's.
Before Bennett addressed the court, Crown prosecutor Elaina Campbell summarized where the Crown stands on sentencing.
Although second-degree murder comes with an automatic life sentence, the judge must still determine how many years Bennett must serve before he's eligible for parole. The minimum is 10 years and the maximum 25 years.
Campbell said the Crown would like to see him serve 22 years.
"The Court of Appeal of New Brunswick has endorsed the understanding that decisions involving the murder of a child, in practice, support the 'upper range' for parole ineligibility for what has been cautiously referred to as the worst of offenders in the worst of cases," the Crown says in its written submission to the court.
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