'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
A former military officer who assaulted police officers with a hockey stick and a sharp metal pole while he stormed the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to more than three years in prison.
Michael Joseph Foy, 33, threw the pole at police and struck officers with the hockey stick as a mob of rioters fought for control of an entrance to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Then he climbed through a broken window and walked around the building.
Foy, a Marine Corps veteran from Michigan, apologized to the officers whom he assaulted -- and "to my country" -- before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan sentenced him to three years and four months of imprisonment. He also thanked the judge for releasing him from pretrial custody in July 2021, allowing him to find a job and improve his mental health.
"You allowed me to build the life that I so desperately needed after I got out of the Marine Corps," he told the judge before learning his sentence.
Chutkan oversees former President Donald Trump's election interference case in Washington, D.C. Her handling of the Jan. 6 riot cases is getting added scrutiny as she presides over Trump's case in the same federal courthouse.
Trump's trial was originally set to begin next month, but the case has been on hold while Trump appeals his claims of presidential immunity from prosecution. No new trial date has been set.
Chutkan is known for being one of the toughest punishers of Jan. 6 rioters. In Foy's case, however, she imposed a punishment that was over four years shorter than the prison sentence that prosecutors recommended. She said she was sentencing Foy "with a heavy heart" because she has been impressed with the progress that he has made since his release from jail.
"I want you to build on that," she said. "I think you can."
But the judge said she had to punish Foy for the "horrific" violence that he engaged in during the Capitol attack.
"You took an oath to serve your country, and you knew better," she said. "What you did there on Jan. 6 was not serving your country."
Chutkan convicted Foy of two felonies -- assaulting a police officer and obstruction of an official proceeding -- after a "stipulated bench trial," which means the judge decided the case without a jury and based on facts that both sides agreed to before trial. Such trials allow defendants to maintain appeal rights that are waived by a guilty plea.
Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of eight years and one month. Foy's attorneys asked the judge to spare Foy from serving any more time behind bars beyond the five months that he spent in pretrial custody.
Chutkan described the prosecutors' recommendation as "unreasonable" and far longer than the sentences handed down to rioters who engaged in similar acts of violence on Jan. 6. The judge said she hasn't grown numb to the violence that she routinely sees captured on video and shown in her courtroom.
"I'm horrified every single time," she said.
Foy travelled alone from his home in Wixom, Michigan, to attend Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally near the White House on Jan. 6. He wore an American flag around his shoulders and carried a "TRUMP 2020" flag attached to a hockey stick.
Approaching the mouth of a tunnel on the Capitol's Lower West Terrace, Foy picked up a sharpened metal pole and hurled it like a spear into the body of a police officer, who fell over.
Foy later swung his hockey stick at police officers, hitting them at least 11 times in 16 seconds. He knocked one of them backward and struck an injured officer who had already fallen down.
"While other rioters engaged in their own violent assaults with (pepper) spray, bare fists, gnarled sticks, stolen batons, and metal crutches, Foy's violence was amongst the most vicious in the melee," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Beckwith wrote in a court filing.
Foy's military background "made him more dangerous and effective" as he assaulted police, the prosecutor argued.
"That violence was a betrayal to the country he vowed to protect and it was directed at Americans who had made similar vows to serve their country and protect their nation's Capital," Beckwith wrote.
Foy served in the US. Marine Corps from 2015 until June 2020, working as a heavy equipment mechanic and attaining the rank of corporal before he was honourably discharged. He served as a supervisor on a North Carolina base.
More than 1,300 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 800 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.
------
Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.