A man charged with assaulting two women in Benoit’s Cove last fall appeared before a St. John’s judge Wednesday on new charges, asking to set a trial date at the earliest opportunity.
“Your honour, these are institutional charges that I wasn’t planning on happening,” Colin Percy Wheeler told Judge James Walsh during a video appearance from Her Majesty’s Penitentiary (HMP).
Wheeler is accused of four counts of false alarm of fire, a single charge of mischief by damaging property and a charge of assault causing bodily harm, stemming from incidents in HMP between Nov. 28, 2017 and April 25 of this year.
Related story:
Earlier date set for Colin Wheeler’s trial in Corner Brook Supreme Court
Wheeler told the judge he has a trial in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court set for June 4 and 5, and requested to go to trial on his new charges around the same time.
“The Supreme Court judge said he’d work through the summer on his own behalf to try and get this done because he knows I’m in segregation 23 hours a day,” Wheeler said.
His case will be called again May 30, when he is scheduled to enter pleas.
Wheeler has been in custody since October, when he was charged with assault with a weapon and two counts of mischief in connection with an incident in Benoit’s Cove, on the province’s west coast, where he had been living. A month later, he was charged with two counts of breaching a court order not to contact the two female complainants in the case.
A civil case involving Wheeler will also be called in Supreme Court in June: in 2012, he filed a statement of claim, which he amended two years later, against Western Health, two doctors and two pharmacies, alleging he was over-prescribed the stimulant medication Ritalin, commonly used to treat attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Wheeler claims the high dosage of the drug caused him hyperactivity and hallucinations, and contributed to him stabbing a person.
Earlier this year, the defendants filed applications requesting the court to either set a timeline for the matter or dismiss it. Wheeler indicated in March he wanted to proceed with the claim and would get a lawyer to represent him in the matter.
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
