A 19-year-old man who fired off a pellet gun at some friends’ house, while also firing into the face of a young female acquaintance causing injury, was sentenced recently at the Laval courthouse to 26 months behind bars.
In his decision rendered against Gabriel Marion, Judge Serge Cimon recounted how the accused fired four times at one victim, hitting her in the forehead, while also shattering her eyeglasses and causing pieces of glass to enter one of her eyes.
Marion had just turned 18, reaching the age of a legal adult, when the act took place in January 2020. Although he was already subject to special conditions previously imposed by court order to not be in possession of firearms, he nonetheless got a hold of a pellet-firing gun, before turning up at his friends’ residence.
Fired pellets inside home
According to facts stated by the judge in his report, Marion had used marijuana beforehand, then started firing off the weapon inside the home.
Although the people he was visiting asked him to stop, he continued firing off rounds at them, according to the judge’s report.
At one point, one of them asked Marion to fire at her so that she could learn to control her fear. Happy to oblige, he followed through on her request, and a year after the incident she still has pain in the eye that was wounded by one of the pellets.
The accused was charged under criminal code sections concerning possession of firearms, even though the weapon he was using was a pellet-firing weapon. According to the Canadian criminal code, some pellet-firing weapons are classified as firearms.
Judge threw the book
Although Marion expressed regret for his actions and for having wounded a friend, the judge noted the seriousness of his acts given they were committed with dangerous weapons.
A psychiatrist’s report tabled during the trial noted that the accused had in recent years developed an increasing interest in firearms, and that he had expressed a desire to eventually acquire a real gun.
In addition to the 26-month prison sentence, Marion also was given three years of probation, and he is now forbidden from owning certain types of firearms for the rest of his life.
