Yellowknife man sentenced to 3 years for assaulting prostitute, robbing cabbie at knifepoint

In a plea deal with the prosecutor, a 29-year-old man convicted of procuring two women as prostitutes, beating and stabbing one of them, then robbing a cab driver at knifepoint has been sentenced to three years in jail.

According to facts Isaias Aburto admitted in court, he punched one of the women in the face and ribs, stabbed her in the leg with a pair of scissors, told her he would put her in the bathtub, slit her throat, cut her into pieces and then send apart to her mother each week. He threatened to cut the other woman's toe off if she ever lied to him.

At the sentencing hearing in N.W.T. Territorial Court on Thursday, the prosecutor said both of the women had not been involved in the sex trade before meeting Aburto in the spring of 2017, and agreedto let him set up dates for them as escorts. Both also agreed to move into his Yellowknife apartment shortly after beginning to work as escorts.

[I] will always seek to redeem myself and give back to my community.- IsaiasAburto

At the time,Aburto was using crack cocaine regularly. His growing paranoia caused him to attack the one woman and threaten the other.

Two months after being arrested and charged for those crimes in September 2017, Aburto was released on $500 bail,despite the prosecutor calling for him to remain in custody.

Five weeks later he got into the back seat of a cab at the Quality Inn. Aburto was wearing a hoodie with the hood up and a white scarf covering his face. He ordered the driver to turn into an alleyway, then reached around and held a knife to his throat and demanded cash, the driver's phone and the keys to the cab.

The driver complied at first, but then fought back. In a victim impact statement the driver said he thought Aburto was going to kill him. Aburto ran away, but was later arrested by police.

'I will always be sorry'

At thesentencing hearing, Aburto told the judge his drug taking days are behind him, despite "many opportunities to use them while in jail."

"I will always be sorry and will always seek to redeem myself and give back to my community," he said.

Aburto was sentenced to 18 months in jail for procuring the two women, and six months for assault causing bodily harm on thewoman he was pimping out. He was sentenced to three years for the robbery. But under the plea deal, both sentences are served at the same time, so the global sentence was three years.

With one-and-a-halftimes credit for the time he's already spent in jail, Aburto has just over 19 months left on his sentence.