Anthony Joseph Strickland has been given a year of house arrest for breaking into a restaurant to steal a safe and for unrelated incidents of threatening police officers.
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Judge Catherine Allen-Westby, who sentenced the 19-year-old at provincial court in Corner Brook Friday morning, told him he was being given an opportunity to avoid being sent to prison for these offences.
Crown attorney Kate Ashton had asked for a custodial sentence of between 12 and 16 months or at least a blended sentence that would see six months served behind bars and the rest on house arrest.
Defence counsel Jamie Luscombe had asked for eight to 10 months of house arrest.
Allen-Westby urged Strickland to make the most of the chance the court was providing him by pursuing educational opportunities and seeking help for any substance abuse problems he might have.
She warned him that any breach of his conditional sentence, which include abstaining from non-prescription drugs or alcohol and only leaving home when permitted to do so by his probation officer, would likely land him in prison for the rest of his sentence.
“It is up to you,” she told him. “This is a heck of a lot better than Her Majesty’s Penitentiary by a country mile.”
In January of this year, Allen-Westby gave Strickland a suspended sentence after convicting him of assaulting a woman and warned him to change his ways.
Strickland, who sometimes goes by the surname Gabbard, broke into the A and W restaurant in Deer Lake on Feb. 8, after the eatery he once worked for had closed. He pried the safe, and the cash it contained from the previous day’s business, from under a counter and left with it.
Police, who were called to the investigate the stolen safe, followed shoe prints found at the scene to Strickland’s mother’s house and found him and the safe there.
He told police he needed the money in the safe for his family.
In addition to having pleaded guilty to break and entry, being disguised with intent to commit an offence and breaching curfew order he had been subject to at the time of the break-in, Strickland also entered guilty pleas to two counts of uttering threats and another court order breach.
The threat charges stemmed from Strickland’s arrest in October after police responded to a disturbance at a house party at Humber Valley Resort. While being arrested, an intoxicated and belligerent Strickland threatened harm to two officers and their families as he resisted being arrested by them.
As part of his sentence and probation, Strickland has been ordered to have no communication with any of his victims, including the owner of the A and W store and the officers, and is prohibited from going to the restaurant in Deer Lake.
