TorontoSun.com - Mark Bonokoski - A family still grieves...
TorontoSun.com - Mark Bonokoski - A family still grieves...


July 2, 2006

A family still grieves and is filled with apprehension as the killer of their prodigious son is about to be released back into their community

By MARK BONOKOSKI

Some years ago, while it was not delivered on the occasion of Canada Day, then-prime minister Jean Chretien gave his most oft-quoted speech about this great land of ours -- about how Canada was "the best country in the world in which to live (and) where young people have a chance to grow and be the best at whatever they want to do."

Andy Moffitt exemplified one of those young people.

He was a computer prodigy, and one of the top students in the engineering program at the University of Ottawa.

In 2003, he did his parents proud by being awarded the Governor General's Award for Bravery.

Chretien's speech on the potential of young people in Canada was delivered as his reply to the Speech from the Throne in October 1999.

By this time, however, Andy Moffitt had already been in his grave for almost a year.

On Canada Day, during the year the bravery award was posthumously bestowed to Andy Moffitt, which also marked the 10th anniversary of his years as PM, Chretien took excerpts of that old speech and rolled it out again to the flag wavers who had gathered on Parliament Hill to celebrate this country's birthday.

'TALKING ABOUT ANDY'

Andy Moffitt's mother never forgot that speech.

"I remember listening, and then thinking to myself that he was talking about Andy," Paulette Moffitt says.

"But my Andy was never given the chance to fulfill his dream, or to be the best at whatever he set out to do.

"Instead, he was murdered."

In six weeks time, Andy Moffitt's killer will be released from prison, his statutory release date being Aug. 16.

A year ago, at a hearing at Kingston's Bath Penitentiary that I attended, Henry Danninger's bid for early release from his five-year manslaughter conviction was denied by the National Parole Board.

He had done nothing to earn his way out -- becoming a skinhead in appearance, losing 80 pounds, and quitting smoking don't exactly qualify as get-out-of-jail cards.

In August, however, doing nothing will no longer matter since the law demands the release of prisoners after they have served two-thirds of their sentences.

What Henry Danninger did on the eve of Christmas Eve, 1998, was snuff out a life with so much obvious potential that any prime minister bragging about this country's young people could have used him as a poster boy.

Henry Danninger, however, was the flip side of that analogy, yet he is the one who still has a life to live.

Armed with what he called a "bad-ass knife" -- which begs the question why the House of Commons is still balking at minimum sentences for the criminal use of a knife -- Henry Danninger, now 33, went to an Ottawa bar to confront a former roommate over scooping his cache of drugs, and ended up running that knife through Andy Moffitt's heart.

It was Moffitt's reward for being an innocent peacemaker. Instead of going home after celebrating the end of exams, he went, at the age of 23, to a grave at St. Francis Xavier Cemetery in the small St. Lawrence seaway city of Brockville, population 22,000.

It is -- ironically, and coincidentally -- Henry Danninger's hometown too, a place where it is impossible to simply blend into the crowd, because, as I witnessed growing up there when the population was only 5,000 less, it is a town where a low profile is impossible to maintain when there is any notoriety behind the name.

Henry Danninger, therefore, will no doubt be the talk of the town, and his movements no secret, thereby making it no easier for the Moffitts to forget the unforgettable when their son's killer is again walking main street.

With Danninger's impending release date on the horizon, Paulette Moffitt wrote a letter to Keith Coulter, commissioner of Corrections Canada, begging him to do whatever he could to stop Danninger's statutory release -- citing a section of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that allows him to send a case directly to the chairman of the parole board for additional review, particularly since one of the reasons Danninger's parole was denied last year was because he was deemed at high risk to reoffend.

Coulter never replied, but his deputy commissioner, Nancy Stableforth, did.

And, in that letter, Stableforth indicated that it was virtually a foregone conclusion that Danninger will, indeed, be released next month because, despite what the parole board thought a year ago, there now existed "no reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Danninger is likely to commit an offence causing serious harm or death to another person, a sexual offence involving a child, or a serious drug offence prior to the expiration of his sentence."

Danninger's release, therefore, is all but a done deal.

If that turns out to be the case, what Paulette Moffitt wants is a parole restriction that keeps him out of Brockville.

LUCKY MAN

And who could blame her?

While Stableforth indicated she would forward Moffitt's concerns to the parole board, it will likely carry no weight.

Even while denying Danninger his parole last summer, the tribunal made it clear that Danninger was a lucky man for one reason and one reason alone.

"You are fortunate to have a strong, unconditional support from your family who reside in Brockville," the NPB decision sheet reads. "Their pro-social influence will be important in your eventual transition back to society."

In other words, come August, Brockville's population will undoubtedly be rising by one -- Henry Danninger's rights prevailing over a mother's whose son he killed, and whose future in this country would have been fodder for any prime minister's speech on any given Canada Day.





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