TORONTO — A 52-year-old inmate pleaded guilty this week to aggravated assault for an April attack on his 81-year-old cellmate at the Toronto South Detention Centre in Etobicoke.Court and reporting say the assault included removing Luther Pippy’s eyes. The Toronto Star reported the victim’s eyeballs have not been located.Douglats Destruzions-Dumesnil entered the plea for the April 12 attack. Court records allege he did “maim, disfigure and/or endanger the life” of the senior.The two men were housed together in the jail’s special-needs wing. Destruzions-Dumesnil had been sent to Toronto South about two weeks earlier on charges of damaging a patio door, being unlawfully in a house near Bloor St. and Sherbourne St., and obstructing an officer. Court records listed him as having no fixed address.Pippy, a Toronto Community Housing resident in northern Etobicoke, was in custody on charges of damaging a TCHC door, possessing a 30-inch piece of wood for a purpose dangerous to the public peace, and breaching a keep-the-peace order. The Crown stayed those charges four days after the attack. Court records noted: “Accused in hospital.” Neighbours told CTV News he would shout insults and sometimes sleep in stairwells..Destruzions-Dumesnil appeared by video from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in May for a bail hearing that was aborted after he could not clearly state his name.The guilty plea is the latest in a string of serious assaults at Toronto South involving inmates with mental-health issues. In a separate case this year, an inmate was found guilty of manslaughter in the fatal beating of a brain-injured senior who had been held for months without a bail hearing. In another, an inmate was found not criminally responsible after killing a cellmate he believed was a demon — after guards were called twice and did not intervene.The Ford government has pledged bail and jail reform. This case still asks how an 81-year-old on minor public-order charges was left in a cell with a man who could not state his own name a month later.Sentencing has not yet been reported.
