Police issue notice about high-risk offender now living in London area

London police have issued a public notice about a high-risk offender who is now residing in the London area.

In a brief media release, police said Ernest Guitare, 60, was released on Thursday after serving a federal sentence in an unspecified New Brunswick institution. He is living in the London area as of Friday, police said.

Guitare, police said, “has a history of violence and weapons offences and is believed to pose a risk to public safety.”

Police have not issued any information about the sentence Guitare was serving in New Brunswick, nor is it clear where in the London area he will be residing.

While police have released few details about Guitare’s criminal history, a New Brunswick court document from 2014 describes him as someone who has “been in federal custody serving sentences since 1985.”

The document is a justice’s dismissal of a preliminary motion for a habeas corpus order that Guitare filed against Correctional Service Canada, in which he claimed he was being unlawfully detained.

At the time, Guitare was being housed at the Atlantic Institution maximum-security penitentiary in Renous, N.B., for an unspecified offence, the document said.

In 1997, Guitare pled guilty to aggravated assault after slashing the hand of a nurse at the same penitentiary. The wound required surgical repair to three severed tendons, and Guitare was sentenced to four years imprisonment, according to a court of appeal document from 2001.

Guitare tried unsuccessfully to appeal the conviction and sentence in the case, claiming he was not psychologically responsible for the offence and was not competent to enter a guilty plea. In 2001, a Court of Appeal ruled that while Guitare suffered from mental health problems, his fitness to stand trial was never raised before the sentencing judge.

A federal court document from November 2002 said Guitare was, at the time, serving “an aggregate sentence of approximately 23 years” for dozens of convictions since 1985, including break-and-enter, armed robbery, and assault.

— With files from Matthew Trevithick