Man who stabbed Saint John police officer sentenced to 10½ years in prison

WARNING: This story contains graphic details.

A man who attacked a Saint John police officer with a knife last winter has been sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison.

Corey James Clarke, 36, was originally charged with attempted murder in the Feb. 21 stabbing of Const. Jonathan Grenier at the west-side Canadian Tire, but pleaded guilty on Oct. 31 to the lesser charge of aggravated assault and several other charges.

Grenier was stabbed three times, in the neck, face and chest, while responding to reports of a man armed with a knife threatening staff and causing damage at the Fairville Boulevard location, the Saint John provincial court heard.

That "routine call became a nightmare," Grenier said Friday, reading his victim impact statement aloud in the courtroom, before he became too emotional to continue and Crown prosecutor Jill Knee took over.

Grenier entered the store just as Clarke was fleeing two other officers. His bodycam video, which was played for the courtroom last fall, showed Clarke taking downward slashes at him in the foyer area before running outside and being wrestled to the ground by the two officers in pursuit.

One of them, Const. Ryan Woodman, was also stabbed in the scuffle — in the back, in the area of his service vest and belt.

Grenier said he's been assaulted and threatened with a "multitude of different weapons" throughout his 10 years of policing with the Saint John Police Force and the RCMP in Portage la Prairie, Man., as well as his seven years of service with the Canadian Armed Forces, which included deployments to Haiti and Afghanistan.

But "the night of Feb. 21 was something completely different.

"Corey Clarke stabbed me in a vital life-threatening area of my upper body without hesitation and complete disregard for human life," he wrote.

Grenier, a father of two, said his doctor told him the wound to his neck was one millimetre away from his carotid artery, a major blood vessel that provides the brain's blood supply. If that had been punctured, he could have bled out in seconds, he said.

"I did not have any weapons in my hands and did not pose any threats against him, and yet [Clarke] managed to escalate the situation to the point of leaving me a millimetre away from making the ultimate sacrifice," wrote Grenier.

The wound to his chest was also very close to a major artery and close to puncturing his lungs, he said.

Grenier said he continues to suffer from nerve damage, neck pain and recurring headaches.