ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

This day, in the hallway of the Superior Court of Justice on University Avenue, Keron Alvarez, who had pleaded guilty to the Jan. 1, 2019 assault on Shellnutt, apologized to him through tears in a one-on-one moment the lawyer says he is still processing months later.

“It was probably one of the more intense and unique experiences of my lifetime,” said Shellnutt, who has spent his career focusing on cyclists on the losing end of collisions, as well as victims of police violence and misconduct. 

Shellnutt had not been on his best behaviour that New Year’s. He hurled a bag of garbage at the car Alvarez and two other men were in after someone catcalled his girlfriend.

He apologized to his assailant. “I wish neither of us had been involved in this situation and that we weren’t here,” he told Alvarez.

With Alvarez now sentenced, Shellnutt is telling this story to show what he has learned as an assault victim and as a lawyer who represents victims — and also to highlight what both accused and victims must sometimes navigate when a system, through no fault of the people involved, takes so long.

Attack caught on video

Shellnutt has zero memory of the New Year’s attack due to his injuries, but a surveillance video shows what happened Jan. 1, 2019, after he and his girlfriend left a bar on Queen Street West.

Shellnutt grabs a bag of garbage and hurls it towards a car, after someone made comments about his girlfriend. Two men get out and chase him, with one of them delivering a punch that sends him backwards with his head hitting the sidewalk. While he is down, Alvarez delivers what a judge later described as a “gratuitous” punch to the head.

Taken to St. Michael’s Hospital with a brain bleed, Shellnutt underwent surgery. During a “long, slow, and painful” recovery, a GoFundMe campaign kept him from losing his home.

Aside from wild hallucinations in hospital, he remembers nothing until six days later, when he saw his Dad at bedside.

Skip exactly ahead one year from the assault, and Shellnutt was not only back to work, but opening his own firm. 

In the meantime, ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ police had arrested Alvarez a month after the assault. He had been out on federal parole at the time, serving a 10-year sentence for attempted murder with a firearm and other offences in a 2011 incident.

When he was arrested for the Shellnutt assault, his parole was revoked. He served another sentence for a weapons offence and was released on bail on June 24, 2021.

He pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault on April 11, 2023, well beyond federal guidelines for a timely trial.

It also took another two years to be sentenced, making it six years after the offence date.

An ‘extraordinary’ delay

“This is an extraordinary length of time to get from event to sentencing, especially since the police arrested and identified Mr. Alvarez within a month of the incident,” Superior Court Justice Robert F. Goldstein wrote in his sentencing decision in the Shelnutt assault, released in May. “Some explanation is required.”

First, jury trials were suspended during COVID-19. When Alvarez eventually pleaded guilty, his lawyer asked for an enhanced pre-sentence screening report, also known as a Morris report. It was approved, but due to a lack of resources, a social worker was not assigned to write it until March 2024.

The reports are prepared through the , a private organization that was prioritizing cases where people were in custody, “which is understandable,” noted Goldstein. The reports are useful “in that they go into a significant level of detail and provide a broader social context in which the individual offender is situated,” wrote Goldstein, and he noted that program resources have since been increased.

Then came delays due to family emergencies and health issues of parties involved in the case and “usual difficulties co-ordinating dates” of counsel and judge. Hence, the sentencing was pushed to April 16 of this year, and reasons released in May.

Alvarez, 41, has a criminal record dating back to when he was 18. He was born in Trinidad and moved to Canada at age 11, and had a difficult upbringing.

According to the judge’s decisions, Alvarez had been subject to anti-Black systemic racism and was called names in school, where very few students were Black. He was sent home after an incident in Grade 10 and never went back. Though he worked for a spell in a fast-food restaurant, he in his own words lived by “hustling.”

Taking all that into consideration, and though Alvarez took responsibility for assaulting Shellnutt, the offence required prison time, Goldstein determined.

“I find that Mr. Alvarez’s moral blameworthiness for this offence is very high. Mr. Alvarez had a common intention to confront and assault Mr. Shellnutt. But it is his gratuitous punch that illustrates exactly what was happening that evening.”

Alvarez was sentenced to three years in prison and had 991 days left to serve at time of sentencing.

Shellnutt, 42, agrees with the sentence for Alvarez, who appears to have changed his ways since assaulting him. And he doesn’t blame the delay on anyone.

“I don’t think that, beyond the resource issue with the courts, that, from my perspective, it was handled improperly by anybody.”

Aftermath of the attack

For a lawyer who has seen a fair share of violent and horrendous videos in his cases, it took about a year to watch the one in which he was nearly killed. He avoided going near the scene on his bike for about as long, and on streetcar rides to and from rehab, he would close his eyes when he passed by it.

“Through trauma counselling, step by step, I got there, and I’ve been able to stand on that street corner and take space, and I now walk by without any adverse impact.”

His last drink was also that New Year’s.

“A doctor said, ‘Your brain isn’t going to heal well if you have beer,’ and so I put down the fruity sours, and I’ve never looked back.”

Given that his response to the catcalling preceded the attack, Shellnutt said that although he did not think he was a bad person before, “I probably had to better myself in terms of responses and my own toxic masculinity and male violence. I probably have an understanding of trauma that I didn’t have before.”

Taking on social justice causes had always been part of his work. But his own experience of being a victim — who needed and got help, who benefitted from excellent health care, who was treated well by police (who he often takes issue with in his cases), who saw justice done, albeit achingly slow, and a judge who recognized the impacts on him and Alvarez — has changed him.

“I think I’ve always had my head on straight, but this helped provide me with an insight into life that I perhaps didn’t have, and has laser focused me on doing what I can while I’m here to make an impact for me and for everybody else.”