Man who brutally beat elderly West Kelowna mother completes sentence

Photo: Kathy Michaels

An Okanagan man who brutally beat his elderly mother and left her for dead in 2019 has been released from prison.

An Okanagan man who brutally beat his elderly mother and left her for dead in 2019 has been released from prison.

In 2021 Kevin Lee Barrett, now 65, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated assault, in the near-fatal attack.

The Parole Board of Canada confirmed in a statement that Barrett, completed his sentence and therefore is no longer under their jurisdiction.

In a decision released in May of 2023, the Parole Board of Canada described Barrett as someone who is “likely to commit an offence causing death or serious harm to another person” if he were to be released from prison, ahead of the completion of this sentence.

He was not released before its completion.

Barrett has been diagnosed with borderline personality and narcissistic personality disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and was often in close contact with his mother.

In April 2019, however, she called RCMP to her mobile home because he had been verbally abusing her in her West Kelowna home and she wanted him to leave.

“A few days later, she caught(him) breaking into her house,” the parole board decision from the time read.

“(He) hit, slapped, punched and threatened to kill her. (He) drove her to a remote location where (he) assaulted and threatened her further. (He) pulled her out of the vehicle, rolled her partway down an embankment and drove away leaving her without her shoes or phone.”

When she extricated herself from the precarious position she’d been abandoned, after playing dead, strangers brought her to safety.

Barrett’s pattern of violence against strangers, security staff, police, neighbours, and his mother has been well documented over a decade, starting in 2009 when he got his first criminal conviction for assault, the parole board said.