A B.C. Court of Appeal ruling has revealed that a man at a youth detention centre sustained a permanent brain injury less than two months after a 2016 riot at the same facility on Fraser Park Drive in Burnaby.

It came to light in a case involving a young offender who was appealing a sentence for participating in the July 2016 uprising.

On September 14, 2016, this young offender and three others "swarmed" and assaulted another youth and an adult in the Burnaby Youth Correction Centre.

According to the B.C. Court of Appeal ruling, the man suffered a "traumatic brain injury and 'parenchymal bleed', multiple contusions with a periorbital hematoma, nasal fracture, and lacerations to the scalp".

A publication ban under the Youth Criminal Justice Act prohibits the release of any information that would identify the youth.

A three-judge panel on the B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed the youth's appeal of a sentence of 16 moths.

The ruling noted that five offenders participated in the July 2016 riot, which lasted about six hours and caused more than $150,000 in damage.

During the uprising, a fire was started in one of the living units, destroying other living units.

After the distubance was quelled, the then representative for children and youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, told the Vancouver Sun that she wasn't surprised over the eruption of violence.

She said that was because the provincial government had recently closed a youth detention centre in Victoria and downgraded services in Prince George, turning the Burnaby facility into a "super-jail" for young offenders. 

As a result, gang members from Prince George and Surrey were then housed in the same centre.

In 2013 West Vancouver filmmaker and priest Larry Lynn and the National Film Board joined forces to create a documentary called Kids in Jail, which focused on youths incarcerated at the Burnaby Youth Corrections Centre.

This film is available on the NFB website. (Lynn was married to popular Vancouver actor Babz Chula, who died in 2010.)