More than four dozen protesters gathered in downtown Halifax to call for upgraded charges against a man accused of shooting a co-worker with a nail gun at a construction site last month.
The victim Nhlanhla Dlamini says the incident was racially motivated and he endured weeks of racist insults at the job site in Pictou County before he was shot. The 21-year-old black man said a colleague purposely shot him in the back while they were on the job in late September.
“We had a little lunch break and then we went back to work so I was just going back to what I was doing and the next thing he was just pointing the gun at me and I just ran,” Dlamini told CTV Atlantic at the protest on Friday.
Dlamini suffered a punctured lung from the nine-centimetre long framing nail and spent a few days in the hospital.
A 43-year-old man from Trenton, N.S. has been charged with one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm – a charge that Dlamini’s supporters say doesn’t go far enough in its punishment.
Standing in solidarity with Dlamini, the crowd of protesters huddled outside of the Halifax Labour Department offices called for the charge against the accused man to be upgraded.
“I think it’s important that citizens don’t just wait for the system and we try and influence the system and make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to do,” Stacey Dlamini, the victim’s mother, said.
PQ Properties Ltd., the property developer Dlamini was working for, has called the incident an accident. The company’s lawyer Craig Clarke said his client wasn’t aware of any allegations of racism or harassment at the work site.
“My client takes that very seriously and wants to have a safe and healthy working environment for all his employees and so any complaints that would have been made would have been taken seriously and would have been investigated,” he said.
Dlamini told the participants at the rally that he had only been working at the construction site for a couple of weeks before the incident and he didn’t feel comfortable speaking out about the alleged harassment at the time.
“For me to just go and jump right into that and just say ‘Oh, I have problems with so-and-so,’ I was just going to let it die out,” he said.
PQ Properties said it has hired a consultant to review its workplace conditions.
Shawn Wade Hynes, 43, faces a charge of criminal negligence causing bodily harm. He is scheduled to appear in Pictou Provincial Court on Dec. 21.
None of the allegations have been tested in court.
With a report from CTV Atlantic’s Suzette Belliveau
