METRO VANCOUVER – A Pitt Meadows man who fired shots into his neighbour’s dump truck near a local park in 2009 should spend six years in prison, prosecutor B. Keith Boland said in B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday.
Boland said Darcey Branstrom should be sentenced to four years for being in possession of a loaded gun, plus a year each consecutively for firing the weapon and for having a marijuana growing operation inside his house at the time.
“At the end of the day, for Mr. Branstrom having the gun, using the gun, and simultaneously having a grow-op, a global sentence of six years is appropriate,” Boland said.
But Branstrom’s lawyer Leonard Kompa intends to seek a sentence less than the three-year mandatory minimum for the firearms convictions and has filed a constitutional challenge. Kompa will make his arguments to Justice Sandra Ballance Wednesday.
Earlier this year, a Surrey Provincial Court judge ruled that Canada’s mandatory minimum prison sentence for illegal gun possession is unconstitutional.
Judge James Bahen said that the three-year minimum sentence – enacted in 2008 for possession of a loaded, prohibited firearm – violates sections 7 and 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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But Bahen also said that he needed to hear from Crown prosecutors about whether those Charter violations should reduce the sentence for Glenn Harley Sheck, who was caught two years ago carrying a loaded Glock inside his Louis Vuitton man purse.
The arguments in the Sheck case are scheduled for October 29, 2013.
The mandatory minimum gun sentences have also been ruled unconstitutional in several Ontario cases that are under appeal.
Branstrom’s neighbour called Ridge Meadows RCMP on Nov. 12, 2009 to report that he had found what he believed to be bullet holes in the driver’s door of his dump truck.
His wife and a tenant told police they had heard loud noises the night before that could have been gunshots, Boland said.
He said Branstrom was identified as a suspect because of an acrimonious relationship with the neighbours. At the time of the shooting, he was facing a mischief charge for smashing the windows of a car in the neighbours’ driveway a year earlier.
Boland said the angle of the bullet holes in the truck “seemed to point to the front door of Mr. Branstrom,” who police saw picking something up off his front lawn and putting it in his underwear.
They got a search warrant for Branstrom’s house where they found a loaded gun, ammunition, spent shell casings and about 90 pot plants growing in the house, Boland said.
Branstrom was arrested as he left his home a short time later wearing a suit. He was on his way to court for an appearance in the earlier case, in which he has since pleaded guilty.
Boland said Branstrom, 28, has a criminal record and committed the firearms offences while on conditions for the earlier charge.
And he said Branstrom shooting at the dump truck in a neighbourhood near a park endangered the safety of the community.
He said commercial marijuana growing also attracts violent robberies by other in the “criminal underground.”
“The most likely reason for the firearm was for protection of the grow-op,” he said.
The sentencing hearing continues.
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