Tyler Greening, driver in brutal PWC beating, gets 20 months' house arrest

A man who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for his role in the gang beating of a teenager at Prince of Wales Collegiate in St. John's was sentenced Thursday to 20 months' house arrest and one year of probation.

Tyler Greening, who was 18 at the time of the attack in 2023, also has conditions including an order to keep the peace, submit to electronic monitoring, attend programming as required, have zero contact with any of the other offenders and to stay on his property and within Newfoundland and Labrador unless given permission by the court or by his supervisor.

Greening entered his guilty plea in April, admitting to helping four other teens beat a 16-year-old victim to the brink of death.

He sat with his head bowed and hands on his knees as Judge Jacqueline Brazil described the facts of the case.

Greening drove four teenagers, all under 18, to the St. John's high school in March 2023. He believed at the time that he was there to protect one of his friends.

But the four minors had other plans, revealing a baseball bat and a hatchet — one covered in racial slurs and swastikas — when they cornered the victim just outside the school's entrance.

They bludgeoned the victim repeatedly in the head with the bat and the blunt end of the axe. Later, the victim's surgeon said his injuries were among the worst he'd ever seen, with brain bleeding and multiple skull fractures.

Greening stood watching the attack, but didn't intervene or participate; he then helped the four other offenders flee in his car, which they later abandoned.

Greening turned himself in to police several days later. Brazil noted his confessions helped police investigate the four attackers. His co-operation attracted threats from the four offenders, Brazil added, "because he was perceived as a 'rat.'"

Greening remorseful, judge says

Brazil reminded the court that a sentence should be decided based on risk to public safety, not retribution or public anger over a crime.

She noted Greening, the oldest of the five convicted in the attack and the only one publicly identified, had become the "poster child" in the media for the crime despite being the least morally blameworthy.

She also accepted his remorse as genuine.

At his last court appearance in September, Greening offered a lengthy and moving speech in which he disclosed the aftermath of the attacks led him to consider suicide. 

"Every day I have felt regret and shame," he said at the time. "Not once was I aware that things could have escalated so quickly into something that nearly ended … an innocent boy's life."

The victim, who can't be identified because of a publication ban, wrote in a victim impact statement that he wholly believed he was going to die in the days following the attack. He and his family described symptoms of severe trauma, including insomnia and hypervigilance. 

In imposing the conditional sentence, Brazil told the court Greening was at a low risk to re-offend and was not a threat to public safety, and said he was more likely to be rehabilitated under house arrest than in prison — and suggested the often criticized conditions at Her Majesty's Penitentiary also helped inform her decision to allow Greening to serve his time at home.

As she handed down her sentence, Brazil looked sternly at Greening, noting he'd already served 20 months under bail conditions. "Now's your chance," she said. 

The four others involved in the attack, all minors who can't be identified, also pleaded guilty to the assault. Two received 18 months in juvenile detention, and the other two 24 months — the maximum sentence for a charge less than murder for a minor.

Greening's sentencing comes on the heels of two violent attacks in Mount Pearl last week, in which police say a gang of teenagers brutally attacked two victims. Six teens, aged 13 to 16, have now been arrested in connection with those assaults, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary said Wednesday.

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