{"id":20623,"date":"2018-05-15T13:24:08","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T17:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20623"},"modified":"2018-05-23T18:00:41","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T22:00:41","slug":"aggravated-assault-charges-against-steve-hinder-withdrawn-by-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aggravated-assault-charges-against-steve-hinder-withdrawn-by-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Aggravated assault charges against Steve Hinder withdrawn by Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aggravated assault charges levelled against Magna\u2019s Steve Hinder last month were withdrawn by the Court on Tuesday morning with the Crown concluding there were no grounds.
\nMr. Hinder, a former Aurora councillor and current manager of Magna\u2019s Neighbourhood Network, was charged with aggravated assault on April 10 in the midst of a long-running Civil case brought against him by local business owner Anthony Pullano, a Council candidate in the 2014 municipal election.
\nThe ongoing Civil matter has been working its way through the courts since February of 2015.
\nIn his $5 million Civil lawsuit against Mr. Hinder, Mr. Pullano alleges that on the evening of March 20, 2014, he was confronted by Mr. Hinder at a political event for Newmarket Councillor Jane Twinney, who was acclaimed that evening as the riding\u2019s Progressive Conservative candidate in the 2014 Provincial Election.
\nHe alleges Mr. Hinder approached him at the event and struck him on the chest with his fist where his Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) is located. As a result, Mr. Pullano alleges he suffered injuries and damages, including going the next day to Southlake Regional Health Centre \u201cto deal with the pain and discomfort\u201d near the ICD \u201cas a result of the assault.\u201d
\nAn infection resulted, he goes on to claim, leading to a \u201cdeterioration\u201d in health including \u201closs of heart function, loss of sexual function, a loss of right hand function, and chronic pain and inflammation in his right hand and\/or right arm.\u201d
\nMr. Hinder has strongly denied the claims from the outset and the claims have not been proven in court.
\nIn his defence, lawyers for Mr. Hinder say he was indeed at Ms. Twinney\u2019s event, but he merely approached Mr. Pullano, shook his hand, asked him who he was supporting that evening, and \u201cceased interacting with the plaintiff.\u201d
\nAs such, Mr. Hinder subsequently launched a $1 million counterclaim against Mr. Pullano \u2013 $500,000 for general damages for libel, and a further $500,000 for punitive and aggravated damages \u2013 and a permanent injunction restraining Mr. Pullano for \u201cdirectly or indirectly\u201d spreading what they allege are false statements against Mr. Hinder.
\nThe counterclaim cites upwards of 40 Tweets and other social media posts made by Pullano describing Hinder as a \u201cracist, a \u201cbully\u201d, a \u201cthug\u201d, a \u201ccheater\u201d , claiming that he had engaged in \u201csmear campaigns\u201d against candidates, all of which is denied in the counterclaim.
\n\u201cMr. Hinder pleads that the statements made by Pullano were made with malice, with the intention of harming Mr. Hinder, his reputation and his professional associations,\u201d reads the claim. \u201cPullano has acted irresponsibly and negligently.\u201d
\nIt is alleged Mr. Pullano \u201cinstigated a campaign\u201d to malign Hinder\u2019s reputation and to have him removed from a number of community boards on which he sits, or with which he is affiliated.
\nIn the meantime, however, Mr. Pullano\u2019s claims against Mr. Hinder jumped from the Civil court to Criminal court earlier this spring after Mr. Pullano filed a pre-enquete motion, which brought the matter before a Justice of the Peace to determine whether charges should be laid against an individual following a private complaint.
\nAs such, Mr. Hinder was charged with Aggravated Assault and the case was held over to give both the Crown and the Defence an opportunity to review the relevant material.
\nThe results of that review were made clear on Tuesday morning and the charges ultimately withdrawn.
\n\u201cI have reviewed the matter,\u201d the Crown told the court, noting that this review included \u201cprivate information\u201d from Mr. Pullano.
\n\u201cFor the record, in the course of the review, it became apparent that this matter had also been reported to the York Regional Police,\u201d the Crown continued. \u201cThe York Regional Police did a complete investigation. They consulted with the Crown, that is to say one of my colleagues. The conclusion of that investigation and that consultation was that there were not sufficient grounds to arrest Mr. Hinder for either aggravated assault or assault. I have reviewed that entire investigation again with the assistance of the officer in charge. I agree with the original conclusion.
\n\u201cI have also reviewed the material that is before the court along with this private information. On the basis of the entire review, Your Honour, I have come to the conclusion that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction in this case on the charge before the court or included offences. Accordingly, I am asking that the charge before the court be marked withdrawn.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crown agrees with York Regional Police assessment that there “were not sufficient grounds” to arrest former council member for either Aggravated Assault or Assault and concludes “there is no reasonable prospect of conviction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5mD","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 14:14:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}