Grant De Patie. Photograph: The Province
If you’re from British Columbia, you probably know that you have to pay for your fuel before you fill up. It’s sometimes a tricky proposition because there are times when you just want to fill the tank, so you have to guess how much fuel you have to buy. You probably also knew that there’s a reason for having to pay before pumping.
Prior to 2008, gas station attendants had to deal with “gas and dash”, a situation where drivers would fill up their cars and then speed off before paying. Owing to very shoddy business practices by gas station owners, many of them would take those losses right out of the pay cheques of the attendants. Because of this, the workers were extra vigilant about thieves speeding off with unpaid gasoline.
In March of 2005, Darnell Darcy Pratt was just 16 when he stole $12.30 worth of gas from a Maple Ridge Esso, and then ran down the 24-year-old gas station attendant Grant De Patie with a stolen car. The kid then dragged Grant’s body eight kilometres beneath his car before stopping.
He was sentenced to a nine-year manslaughter charge that was later reduced to seven years on appeal.
Now just five years later, the kid who killed Grant and spawned a law that affects millions of motorists, will be released in June. Grant’s father, Doug, says that Darnell Pratt has never expressed remorse, and is still too young to admit the full extent of the damage he inflicted.
“Darnell Pratt had a chance to express remorse when we met face-to-face with him in jail, but he denied the extent of his crime and didn’t say he was sorry — he only said ‘sorry’ in a letter to impress the judge,” Doug De Patie told the Province.
The kid who murdered Grant will be going free at just 21. At the time, the 16-year-old had been drinking heavily with his friends, and later boasted to them that he’d heard the screams of the gas station attendant as he sped off with him pinned underneath. A friend of Darnell who urged him to flee, collected the baseball cap that flew off Grant’s head, and wore it as a “trophy” until the police arrested him.
Although he was originally sentenced to 9 years as an adult, a B.C. Court of Appeal looked at his case and the sympathy came out. This kid, who had dragged a human being beneath his car with delight, deserved a lighter sentence because the Appeal Court noted his aboriginal ancestry and his exposure to family drug addiction.
Once again, the perpetrator becomes reborn as the victim.
Social workers had taken him from his mother when he was 12 because she was a crystal meth addict and placed him with his aunt. Two months before the murder, he ran away because his aunt tried to stop him from getting drunk, so he went to live with his grandmother. He continued to drink regularly while committing petty theft with his friends.
Darnell had no intent of coming forward with his heinous crime, and showed psychopathic tendencies in boasting about the murder. After the car sped away it was reported to have been seen blasting through a stop sign, a further indication that Darnell, who had consumed 20 beers before his crime, was certainly looking to kill others.
Grant’s body was later found naked, seven and a half kilometres from the Esso at the end of a trail of blood. His flesh had been ground down to the bone on his face, his ribs, his right leg and his chest.
The frightening thing is that this dangerous psychopath will soon be free again, while the family of Grant De Patie continues to live with a nightmare. There’s little question in my mind that Darnell Pratt was headed to a life of violent crime at the time he murdered Grant. The question now becomes one of how successful the five years in prison were to reforming him. Based on the words of Doug De Patie, we can probably assume not much.
I only hope that more people won’t have to die at his hands when he’s released in two months.
That was a horrible crime. I was teaching high school in Maple Ridge at the time and some of my students were friends of Grant De Patie’s. This hurt so many people. I’m rather upset that Pratt is getting out of jail already. I can’t imagine how De Patie’s friends and family feel about it.
And people wonder why so many people have no faith in the so-called ‘justice’ system.
I think what’s most offensive is this tendency to look at the state of mind of the criminal or his personal history to find out the reasons behind his crime.
Frankly I don’t give a sh*t what this kid went through, or whether he was raised by monkeys on a deserted island. He murdered in cold blood, and that’s all that really matters.
It is , of course, reprehensible that this psychopath is getting sympathy from some jerks. We surely will hear from him again, but I sure hope a family member in B.C. is not on the receiving end of his lisense.
I didn’t realise that a part of Canada now has to pay for gas before receiving it. I have become used to that in the U.S. where I spend my winter, but not in Canada where we are more rational. (Supposedly! If you listen to the left)
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grant depatie… that sounds so familiar…
“The number is seven. Remember that…
number seven.”
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“This kid, who had dragged a human being beneath his car with delight, deserved a lighter sentence because the Appeal Court noted his aboriginal ancestry and his exposure to family drug addiction.”
This is the worst kind of racism. The racism of lower expectations.
As a First nations person with a graduate degree, comming from a family which could be considered “upper class” and highly educated would I be given the same leniency if I committed financial fraud? I should hope not!
Agreed Jamie.
Jamie, the worst kind of racism is called genocide.
Yes, I admit to exaggerating to make my point.
You are 100% correct.
Perhaps ‘ominous.’
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“issachar says… Jamie, the worst kind of
racism is called genocide.”
what’s it called when a once strong &
vital culture implodes upon itself?
and jamie… i can imagine your chagrin.
you bust your ass to get a graduate
degree and people probably routinely
assume you’re some kind of token
product of an affirmative action program.
what happened to the meritocracy in
this country?
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Gayle says the system is working fine and we’re a bunch of neanderthal reactionaries.
She hasn’t yet, but will soon.
10……….9…………..8………….7……6…..
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“dmorris says… Gayle says the system is working fine and we’re a bunch of neanderthal reactionaries”
hey, i remember gayle… the “no such thing as a bad boy” lady…
quote — “Or, you could just consider, for one brief moment, that there may be more to these youth than the fact they were involved with a violent incident – like maybe, I don’t know, mental illness, brain damage, sexually and physically abusive childhoods, parental neglect, etc. etc. Maybe they live the life they live because they have no idea how to live in any other way.” — end quote
yeah, gayle… try telling that to grant depatie… oh, wait…
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This @$$hat should stay in jail for the rest of his life just for making us give our credit cards to the shifty 17-year old at the 7-11 before we can fill up…
Here is a guy who went to work, worked his best, try to keep a large corporation from loosing a little over 12 dollars is killed over this by a selfish person who felt he had the right to steal and to kill someone in the process. This person deserve no rights, he did a crime of horrid results and many are effected by this lost of a good worker that only wanted to work to make a living in the best way he can do. Praise for Grant. He will be long remembered
[...] as I recounted in April, although originally sentenced to 9 years in prison, the BC Court of Appeal reduced it to 7 years [...]