CONVICTED killer Kingsley McDonald says he was just having “a bad few months” when he decided to take out his anger on an unsuspecting victim in a brutal Main Street beating caught on video. But the Crown believes McDonald was motivated by something much darker — racism.

McDonald pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm in the April 2006 attack but his sentencing hearing is being delayed by a unique legal process in which a judge must decide if the crime was motivated by hate.

If so, there are provisions for a much longer sentence and Crown attorney Liz Pats is seeking five years behind bars. Provincial court Judge Judith Elliott has reserved her decision until March 20.

The Sudanese-born victim, Sagin Bali, was called to testify Thursday about a series of horrific slurs he claims McDonald — who is aboriginal — hurled at him after a random encounter on the street.

Although he suffered extensive physical injuries including a broken ankle that required three screws to fix, Bali said it was the verbal abuse that left the deepest wounds.
“He said ‘there are too many of you black guys here. These black monkeys are coming to my town and taking our jobs,” Bali, an African-trained economist working at relatively unskilled jobs in Winnipeg, told Elliott.

He said he feels the vulnerability others in his small but highly visible minority group have described lately. Several times over the past 18 months, Sudanese Winnipeggers have said they felt maligned by negative headlines. In the fall of 2005, 17-year-old Phil Haiart was killed by a stray bullet fired in a gang-related shooting.

In December, 2005, there were the deaths of Zunga Bashir and James David at a Silver Heights apartment. Bashir was shot by police after he stabbed David to death.

In April 2006, Clato Mabior, a man from Sudan, was charged with allegedly knowingly infecting young women with HIV.

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