The tumultuous upbringing for a former Canmore man who tried to shoot a Mountie while fleeing a check stop should land him the lightest sentence possible, his lawyer argued Thursday. Read More
Noteworthy legal cases in Calgary and area from April 14-17, 2025
Noteworthy legal cases in Calgary and area from April 14-17, 2025
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The tumultuous upbringing for a former Canmore man who tried to shoot a Mountie while fleeing a check stop should land him the lightest sentence possible, his lawyer argued Thursday.
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Defence counsel Dale Fedorchuk said Justice Keith Yamauchi should consider handing his client, Austin Desylva, the mandatory minimum sentence of five years of discharging a firearm with intent to wound RCMP Cpl. Reyno La Cock.
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“He comes before the court with a very difficult background,” Fedorchuk said, referring to a court-ordered report into Desylva’s Indigenous heritage.
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The report noted Desylva “described a tumultuous upbringing.”
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“I don’t know that the word tumultuous goes far enough. His father and his mother were both drug addicts and his father was physically abusive,” Fedorchuk said.
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The lawyer said Desylva even had to turn to drug trafficking as a youth in order to support the family, which lived in an Ottawa neighbourhood so rough emergency services wouldn’t venture into without a police escort.
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“Their home turned into what he described as a trap house,” Fedorchuk told the Calgary Court of King’s Bench judge.
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“As a child he started selling marijuana to financially help his family.”
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Desylva had been working in Canmore as a line cook but when he lost that job returned to drug dealing to continue supporting his parents.
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“His parents became homeless and blamed him because he wasn’t sending them money when he was incarcerated.”
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Desylva, 28, earlier pleaded guilty to four charges in connection with his exchange of gunfire with La Cock late in the evening of Feb. 24, 2023.
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One bullet from the offender’s 3D-printed handgun struck the passenger side windshield of the officer’s police SUV while another struck a home along Desylva’s escape route.
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He was eventually cornered in a cul-de-sac but when he refused to get out of his car and spun his tires on the snowy roadway La Cock fired 25 shots into the vehicle, striking Desylva twice, fracturing his jaw and the upper plate of his mouth with one bullet and the other lodging in his esophagus.
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Crown prosecutor Aaron Rankin argued a global sentence of eight years was warranted considering Desylva was armed and plying the drug trade.
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Rankin said the combination of drug dealers and guns is considered “a scourge in Canadian society.”
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The prosecutor suggested Desylva was willing “to do anything it took to continue on his criminal enterprise.”