COBALT - The suspect in an attack on a 16-year-old Cobalt girl last week remains in the North Bay Jail today awaiting a bail hearing.
This morning (Nov. 12) about a dozen demonstrators protested outside the Haileybury courthouse, where the case is being heard, asking that 18-year-old Phillipe Gagnon be denied bail. The family remains in Ottawa where Kaylie Smith remains in hospital after being run over by a vehicle and then attacked with a sword. OPP is treating it as an intimate partner violence investigation.
The next appearance has been put off for two weeks and no bail was granted today. The judge has issued a publication ban on all evidence presented in bail court.
The protesters, using a megaphone, were loud enough that they could be heard inside the courtroom chanting "common sense, no bail." The protesters vowed to return in two weeks.
Kaylie's best friend, 16-year-old Cassie Pellerin, skipped school today to attend the protest. She told BayToday that she used to hang out with Smith and Gagnon and knows the two very well. She says no one is surprised the attack happened.
Pellerin says there was talk of shooting up a high school and that Kaylie's stepfather had been beaten in a previous attack.
She says Smith and Gagnon broke up about a week before the attack on Kaylie.
A vigil was held on Sunday night with over 100 people attending.
The family says Kaylie is awake in the hospital and in stable condition.
On Nov. 3, at 6 p.m., Temiskaming OPP were called to the scene of the attack, where a vehicle had struck the girl at the intersection of Helen Street and Prospect Avenue, near Highway 11B after getting off a bus and walking home following a shift at work.
The male driver then exited the vehicle and attacked the victim with a sword, says an OPP release.
BayToday will update this story.
