From time to time - when the pain of loss becomes unbearable - Michael Vincelli picks up a phone, punches in his son’s cell phone number and waits to hear his son’s voice.
But 22-year-old Michael Page-Vincelli will never answer his phone again - his voice was forever silenced three years ago by one fatal punch inside a Burnaby Starbucks.
The man who delivered the blow was in B.C. Supreme Court for sentencing Tuesday.
In a pair of emotional victim-impact statements, Page-Vincelli’s parents talked about the devastating effect Sharpe’s deadly act has had on the North Burnaby family.
“He’s not here and he’s never coming back,” Steffany Page said. “There is a horrible loss and a feeling of emptiness and being incomplete … A question I never had an issue to answer in the past but now I do is, ‘How many kids do you have?’ I don’t know how to answer … With the loss of our son, it’s hard to imagine having great times doing things without Michael. We almost feel guilty leaving him out.”
A jury found Lawrence Sharpe guilty of manslaughter in Page-Vincelli’s death in March.
On July 12, 2017, Sharpe had walked into the Kensington Plaza Starbucks and, without warning, knocked Page-Vincelli to the ground with a single blow.
During the trial, the court heard Page-Vincelli had gotten into an argument shortly before with Sharpe’s girlfriend, Oldouz Pournouruz, outside of the nearby Royal Bank while Sharpe was inside.
“Someone was bullying my girl and I f***ing clocked him for it,” Sharpe told an undercover officer planted in a cell with him at the Burnaby RCMP detachment after his arrest.
That statement and security video from inside the Starbucks contradicted Sharpe’s claim that Page-Vincelli had come at him and he had hit him in self-defence.
The security video shows Pournouruz entering the café ahead of Sharpe and pointing out Page-Vincelli right before the punch, but she was acquitted of being an accessory to the manslaughter.
Crown prosecutor Colleen Smith argued Sharpe should go to jail for two to three years for his crime.
She noted the altercation between Pournouruz and Page-Vincelli had ended and Page-Vincelli had already walked away by the time Sharpe, who was 40 years old at the time, went looking for the 22-year-old in the Starbucks with Pournouruz.
Smith also said Sharpe should have been able to foresee that punching Page-Vincelli in the head without warning was likely to cause bodily harm.
“As was apparent from the video, Mr. Sharpe delivered a very significant blow of considerable force and strength,” Smith said. “He delivered this significant blow to a vulnerable part of Mr. Page-Vincelli’s body, that being his head. The victim was clearly not expecting the blow and was eating chips at the time.”
Smith said Sharpe’s sentence should be fashioned to deter others from using violence to resolve conflicts.
Page-Vincelli’s head hit the floor after the punch and he never regained consciousness.
In her victim-impact statement, Page spoke of the difficult decision to keep her son on life support long enough to fulfill his wish of being an organ donor.
“I stayed with Michael right up until the time they took him to prep him for his organ donation,” she said.
Sharpe’s lawyer Jack Thorhaug didn’t put forward a specific sentencing proposal, but indicated Sharpe might benefit from a shorter jail term of about two years or less and a longer period of probation.
Page-Vincelli’s parents said they never want to see Sharpe again and had no interest in hearing any apology he might have.
Sharpe did address the court in a long, apparently unscripted statement, during which he expressed remorse, but tended to emphasize the impact Page-Vincelli’s death and the trial have had on his own life.
“I feel sorry to the tip of my toes for what happened to them,” he said. “I still don’t understand it. I’ll never understand it. It’s not an us-against-them thing. We’re basically just like mirrors.”
Page-Vincelli’s mother could been seen shaking her head in the gallery during his statement.
Justice Mary Humphries is scheduled to give her sentencing decision Friday afternoon.
