Last week, a man responsible for viciously assaulting an 18-year-old woman at a Winnipeg Olive Garden received his sentencing, as the brave survivor highlighted the lingering emotional and physical torment she continues to grapple with following the incident.
During the court hearing on August 29, the young woman bravely delivered her impact statement, venting her puzzlement over the random attack that altered her life and charting her arduous journey of recovery since that terror-striking day.
“Emotionally, I have been clawing my way through an unprecedented struggle, a struggle engendered by an event that has cast a debilitating shadow over my life,” she voiced in the courtroom.
Robert Alan Ingram, 27, confessed to the court that on June 8, he arbitrarily and without provocation, assaulted the young woman while at the Olive Garden on Reenders Drive. The unprovoked attack left her with multiple penetrating wounds, including those on her chest, which precipitated a collapsed lung, her wrist and clavicle, and two slashes across her neck. She also sustained defensive injuries on her arm. Ingram pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated assault, while two other charges were stayed.
Crown attorney, Colin Soul, labeled her a “lynchpin of resilience” during his recapitulation of the harrowing ordeal.
Preceding the attack, the court heard that Ingram had spent approximately an hour at the restaurant, consuming three beers. He subsequently paid for his drinks, departed, and then returned shortly after for another beer. Upon his return, he beheld the young woman, who wasn’t his server, assaulted her with a stab to her neck, brought her to the ground and continued his relentless assault.
The victim was rushed to the hospital in an unstable condition, while Ingram was discovered around 8:30 p.m. in a nearby parking lot, still clutching the weapon stained with dried blood.
Redressing her attacker during her victim impact statement, she pointedly asked, “Why was my life so minuscule to you?”
She also spoke of the profound transformations in her life post-attack. Once a vibrant sports enthusiast who reveled in basketball, the young woman confessed to her struggles when climbing stairs due to her compromised lung and neck muscles that were sliced open in the attack.
Furthermore, the attack added to an already heavy trove of struggles, having faced racial prejudice, depression, and insomnia as a Black Muslim woman. Yet, she admitted, none of her prior challenges measured up to the aftermath of this attack.
Detailing her sense of fear and vulnerability, she narrated how she spent her initial weeks post-attack, wide awake at 3 a.m, clutching a kitchen knife beneath her pillow, seized by the dread of her attacker’s potential reappearance.
The day of the assault was vivified by her anticipation of her new serving position at the restaurant, a role she had eagerly worked towards by sacrificing her senior skip day, and memorizing the menu thoroughly.
“Instead of my last moment being enveloped by the warmth of family love at 98 and a half, I foresaw it beneath the sterile lights of an ambulance, my brand-new $100 uniform being snipped away,” she expressed.
She further shared the financial toll her inability to work has cast on her family, with her mother forced to subtract from their savings to continue funding her university education.
The court understood that Ingram suffered from mental conditions and had intended on the night of the attack to return to federal prison, despite having never been previously incarcerated. Ingram admitted to his unspecified psychotic disorder yet maintained remorse for his actions.
In response to Ingram’s assertion that his actions were “not a hate crime,” Judge Malcolm McDonald deemed the incident a deeply distressing instance of random violence carried out in pursuit of a strange agenda.
For his heinous crime, Ingram was awarded six years in federal prison, reduced by his pretrial custody time. While the crown pressed for an eight-year sentence, the defense argued for a span of four years.
