On April 5, 2019, Tyrone Jackson Guimond, 36, had been driving in the 4400 block of Still Creek Drive at a “high rate of speed,” according to Burnaby RCMP, when he hit a pickup truck and hopped the curb, hitting a pedestrian and colliding with a tree before coming to a stop.
The pedestrian, a 36-year-old woman, suffered broken bones, police said.
After pleading guilty, Guimond was sentenced on June 30, 2021.
The judge handed him a one-year conditional sentence – with an order that included a curfew – a two-year driving ban and a $1,000 fine.
Two weeks later, however, Guimond was pulled over at about 11 p.m. for driving in the 2500 block of East Broadway without his lights on.
He pleaded guilty last week to the Motor Vehicle Act charge of driving while prohibited, and Crown prosecutor Jeffrey LaPorte said Guimond should be banned from driving for three years and charged a $2,000 fine.
A conditional sentence is a jail sentence served in the community. If a person doesn’t follow the rules of a conditional sentence order, they can be ordered to spend the rest of their sentence in jail, but LaPorte said Guimond’s conditional sentence order should stay in place as is.
And defence lawyer Matthew James said Guimond should pay a lesser fine of $500 but agreed with the three-year driving ban.
He said the reason Guimond had been driving that night was because his pregnant girlfriend had called him saying she was experiencing abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding.
“At that point in time, I don’t think he was acting or thinking very rationally,” James said.
James said Guimond didn’t have money for a taxi and didn’t think of calling police.
Vancouver provincial court Judge Ellen Gordon sounded unconvinced.
She told Guimond he was “so fortunate” LaPorte had argued the conditional sentence order should stay in place.
“I would have terminated it for a couple of months and sent you to jail,” she said.
Instead, she ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine and slapped him with a three-year driving prohibition.
“It runs every day; it runs 24 hours a day,” she said.
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