TORONTO -- Colin Berwick came home from Newmarket court yesterday and told his son the man who put him in a wheelchair was found guilty on all charges.
Shayne just stared at his father with his sweet, childlike smile.
"He didn't have a clue what I was talking about," Berwick says with a sigh. "I wish he did, but he doesn't."
That's because Shayne has no memory at all since being thrown from the back of his friend's Honda Civic during a wild, high-speed chase that saw their car being repeatedly rammed from behind by Trevor Middleton's pickup truck.
The horrific ending to a despicable racist attack called "nipper tipping."
Yesterday, a jury found Middleton, 23, guilty of four counts of aggravated assault and two of criminal negligence causing bodily harm in the Sept. 16, 2007, incident.
The former motocross rider was allowed to remain free on bail so he could spend Christmas with his family before a sentencing hearing begins next month.
Middleton, of course, is luckier than Shayne. No one knows if the 26-year-old former apprentice electrician will ever be free of the prison he's been locked inside.
Shayne's brain injury from Middleton's car chase was so severe that when he emerged from his four-month coma -- after doctors had given him only a 10% chance of survival -- he could remember nothing: Not his parents, not his name, not even how to walk or read.
He now requires 24-hour care and his stepmom Terry has given up her job so she can be with him around the clock as he slowly relearns everything from the start.
"As part of (Middleton's) sentence he should have to deal with people with brain injury to see the damage done by his carelessness," says Shayne's dad, a property manager. "In a perfect world, he should have to work all day and then come home at night and look after him."
In a perfect world. But Berwick will leave sentencing up to the judge. "If it was up to me, it would be a long time. Shayne's sentence is life for now. He has no recollection, he just lives for the moment. He's just relearning who he is.
"So any time he serves is not going to be enough. It's not going to change what Shayne is now."
Which is a man reduced to relearning his letters and his colours, to figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other, to being toileted and bathed by others. A life forever damaged -- and why? Because a group of racist louts didn't like Asian-Canadians fishing in "their" waters.
In the early morning hours of Sept. 16, 2007, Shayne and six of his long-time pals -- some of whom are Asian -- had driven up to Sutton for some late-night fishing on Lake Simcoe. They were confronted on the pier by Middleton and a group of 15 to 20 locals who surrounded them and told them they were "Canadian" and doing their "Canadian duty" by demanding to see their fishing licences.
Before Ruo Hang Liu and Charles Hogan could reach for their wallets, they were thrown into the water, one of many attacks on Asian anglers that became known as "nipper tipping" that year.
Middleton and the rest of his group then took off, except for Nick Perry who had become embroiled in a fight with one of Shayne's friends.
When Middleton eventually returned, he found Perry lying injured on the side of the road.
Enraged, he got back into his truck and began chasing four of the seven Toronto friends who were now in Liu's Honda, repeatedly slamming into their vehicle until it ran off the road.
Hogan was thrown from the car and landed in the water. But Shayne was ejected 27 metres from the backseat and hit a tree, leaving him with a punctured lung, 10 broken ribs and severe brain damage.
Because of the nature of no-fault insurance, the Berwicks are suing Middleton's insurance company as well as Liu's -- and not Liu personally, as was wrongly reported.
In fact, Berwick says, Liu and the other young men remain close to Shayne and continue to support and visit their longtime friend. "I spoke to Ruo and he said, 'Finally, justice has been served.' He was pretty happy about it."
The Berwicks just hope this guilty verdict is a wake-up call to the ugliness of racism in parts of small-town Ontario. "Hopefully this will open people's eyes about the human rights of Asian-Canadians," says Terry. "People should be allowed to fish wherever they want."
Last night, with Shayne oblivious to these last few weeks of anxiety, his parents could finally exhale. This part of their nightmare is over.
But it's just the start of their son's long journey back to the man he used to be, back before hatred and bigotry came calling on a dark country pier.
MICHELE.MANDEL@SUNMEDIA.CA OR 416-947-2231
