Jannai Dopwell-Bailey’s killer must serve at least 13 years of life sentence, judge rules

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The man recently convicted of the second-degree murder of teenager Jannai Dopwell-Bailey will have to serve at least 13 years behind bars before he becomes eligible for parole on his life sentence.

Superior Court Justice Annie Émond delivered her sentence in the case against Andrei Donet, 21, Thursday morning at the Montreal courthouse.

On May 19, a jury found Donet guilty of the murder, and in December a different jury found a minor guilty of second-degree murder as well. That case was heard at Montreal’s youth courthouse and the young man has yet to be sentenced.

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A second-degree murder conviction in adult court comes with an automatic life sentence. Émond was left to determine Donet’s period of parole ineligibility. The minimum is 10 years and the maximum is 25. When the jury convicted Donet last month, it recommended that the period of parole ineligibility be set at 12 years. The prosecution recommended 15 years while Donet’s lawyers, Benoît Demchuck and Martin Latour, recommended the minimum.

On Oct. 18, 2021, Jannai, 16, was pepper-sprayed, punched, kicked and stabbed minutes after he exited his school on Van Horne Ave. Staff at the school anticipated something was about to happen when a teacher spotted the minor waiting outside. He had been expelled from the school weeks earlier for fighting and had no reason to be outside the school before Jannai was attacked.

During Donet’s trial, one staff member said she tried to steer Jannai and his friends away from Donet and the expelled student, but the youths ended up in a confrontation.

“The members of (Jannai’s) family expressed their immense pain caused by his violent death,” the judge said in reference to victim-impact statements read into the court record on May 30. “They mentioned they were doubly marked by his death seeing as how the two assailants joked about the crime (on social media) after the murder.”

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Donet and the minor posted a video on Instagram an hour after Jannai was killed and made apparent mocking references toward the victim. When Donet was arrested weeks later, police searched his iPhone and found what appeared to be lyrics to a rap song mocking Jannai among Donet’s personal notes.

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Katerine Brabant said the motive behind the homicide involved a conflict between two groups, one based in Côte-des-Neiges and the other in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, but Émond said the evidence heard at trial left the reason behind the slaying “nebulous.”

The judge also said it was unclear who delivered the fatal stab wounds to Jannai.

The judge also sentenced Donet to an eight-year prison term, to be served concurrently, for his role in an attack on a fellow detainee at the Montreal Detention Centre on July 29, 2023. A surveillance camera inside the jail recorded how Donet and another man assaulted the victim. Donet also attacked the man with a knife, leaving him with 10 laceration wounds.

This report will be updated.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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