A man arrested in July by Sarnia police shortly after making their weekly social media wanted list was found about 250 kilometers away from the border city.
A man arrested in July by Sarnia police shortly after making their weekly social media wanted list was found about 250 kilometers away from the border city.
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Tyler Yessie, 36, was arrested in Owen Sound, where he’d been living and working for several months.
“The Sarnia police went to get him and then brought him back,” his lawyer, Nick Cake, recently told a Sarnia judge.
After spending a couple of months in jail, the first-time offender recently pleaded guilty to charges including break and enter and assault, forcible entry, resisting police, assault, mischief under $5,000, theft under $5,000, and breaching bail. For that crime spree, which stretched over about 10 months and was fueled by an addiction to crack cocaine, he was sentenced to 14 months in jail.
“Mr. Yessie, for a person with no criminal record this is a pretty unfortunate way to start out having a criminal record,” Justice Mark Poland said.
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But the judge added he heard what he said from the prisoner’s box about wanting to rehabilitate himself for his family.
“I think that’s probably the most important motivation that you can keep in the front of your mind,” he said. “I wish you luck with that, sir.”
At the request of both lawyers, Poland recommended to corrections officials Yessie serve his sentence at the Algoma Treatment and Remand Center in Sault Ste. Marie, where he can get treatment for his drug addiction.
“He has a desire to go off to Algoma,” Cake said.
Cake said the offenses his client committed were clearly crimes of opportunity.
“The majority of them involving the attempt to get money or the attempt to get goods in order to fence for money,” he said.
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Yessie repeatedly broke into a Sarnia home and stole cash, debit cards, phones and a bicycle while also committing assault and mischief. In that same home he resisted police by trying to jump out of a window while one of his wrists was handcuffed. An off-duty officer also saw him breach his lease by going back to the house while they were volunteering at a nearby grocery store.
Yessie later stole narcotics and a $600 tablet from another person’s home.
Warrants were issued for his arrest, but they weren’t executed until July 6 in Owen Sound, three days after he appeared on the Sarnia police Wanted Wednesday social media campaign.
Yessie, who was ordered to pay almost $900 in restitution, apologized to the court.
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