Matthew Angus was terrified as police charged into his Watford home armed with a search warrant.
“The police attended wearing military – essentially military fatigues – with machine guns out and a flash bomb was used in the home of Mr. Angus that really terrified him,” his criminal defense lawyer, Luigi Perzia, said Friday in a Sarnia courtroom. “In one officer’s note, he was noted as being, ‘Shaking,’ upon arrest.”
But assistant federal prosecutor Brian Higgins said the police’s weapons were likely rifles that may have appeared, to the untrained eye, to look like machine guns.
“It’s not like they were coming in with automatic weapons,” he said of the Jan. 7, 2021, raid that uncovered more than $10,000 worth of illegal drugs in Angus’ Victoria Street home.
Higgins also said the so-called flash bomb was just a device used as a distraction. But he didn’t downplay how scared Angus was when the OPP’s tactical rescue unit charged into his home around 4:30 am that Thursday.
“He was visibly shaking,” Higgins said while referencing an agreed statement of facts.
Lambton OPP said multiple divisions including the community street crimes unit, West Region tactical response unit, canine unit, emergency response team, and intelligence unit executed the search warrant together. Officers found 45 grams of cocaine, 35 grams of MDMA, 75 grams of LSD, 76 grams of psilocybin, 29 grams of shatter – concentrated THC – eight oxycodone pills, and about $300 in cash. The haul was worth more than $10,000, police said.
Angus, 22, and his 18-year-old girlfriend were both arrested and charged. On Friday, Angus, now 23, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and possession of psilocybin, both for the purpose of trafficking. He was sentenced to eight months of house arrest followed by seven more months of living at home with a curfew.
A lack of a prior criminal record and issues linked to the search warrant helped keep Angus from heading to a provincial jail.
“There were certainly some triable issues here from Mr. Angus’ perspective,” Perzia said.
Angus declined a chance to address the court.
Justice Anne McFadyen agreed to impose the 15-month conditional sentence both lawyers suggested and gave Angus credit for pleading guilty.
“However, I do note that there is a level of sophistication to the crimes before the court given your letter of direction to associates in the event that they were apprehended or caught by certain officers,” she said.
The judge also imposed a one-year probation order. Angus can’t do illegal drugs or drink alcohol while serving his sentence and is banned from weapons.
He also had to forfeit the cash police seized.
The rest of the charges against him and all of the charges laid against his girlfriend were withdrawn.