Man scores conditional sentence - and bail - on second gun charge
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As police closed in on human trafficking and drug-dealing suspect Deion ‘D’ Cuvilie in December 2017, they snared Kristos Shepherd with possessing one of the guns used to intimidate Cuvilie’s teenaged victims.
The now 22-year-old Shepherd – who had nothing to do with the human trafficking or drug-dealing allegations – was convicted of possessing a Norinco semi-automatic rifle in the trunk of a unplated Mazda at his Quail Feather Cres. home.
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Justice Mary Hogan was about to sentence Shepherd in October last year after hearing defence and Crown argue one month earlier about what was the appropriate sentence.
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Before Hogan could pass sentence on Oct. 30, Shepherd was arrested, along with his girlfriend and his brother, with new firearms-related offences in Peel Region.
The gun was found in the closet of the basement home where all three were living.
Hogan said she decided, before the new charges, that “my position had not changed and the appropriate sentence was a one-year conditional sentence.”
Crown attorney Emily Marrocco said Shepherd shouldn’t be getting a conditional sentence since “it can no longer be said that he would not endanger the community … and cannot be put back into the same home where the subject of the new charge — a firearm — was found.”
Shepherd, who was on bail awaiting sentencing on the first gun conviction, was initially denied bail in January. He has since been granted bail.
Shepherd’s lawyer, Margaret Bojanowska, told Hogan that Shepherd “should be presumed innocent” of the second charges and shouldn’t lose the benefit of the conditional sentence.
Hogan agreed with Bojanowska that Shepherd shouldn’t be treated differently just because of the new charges, especially since police had targeted his brother, not him.
In an interview Friday, Bojanowska said her client was wrongly convicted of the first gun charge and is appealing that conviction, despite the favourable sentence imposed by the judge.
“He’s a hard-working young man with two jobs. He was swept up in an investigation for Cuvilie. Shepherd had no prior criminal record,” said Bojanowska.
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