Michelle Elliott considered Christopher Rogers a friend and trusted him.
So when he came into the Sarnia house she was in pointing a can of bear spray at a bunch of people there, she didn’t think he’d actually pull the trigger.
She was wrong.
“He stood not five feet from me, looked me in the face and pulled the trigger,” she wrote in a statement read in a Sarnia courtroom. “I have never felt fear or pain like I did that day. I couldn’t see and I felt like I was on fire. I didn’t know where anyone was or if he was going to do anything else to me.”
After being released from hospital, Elliott recalled being scared by every little noise she heard such as knocks at the door and cellphone rings.
“I nearly jumped out of my skin,” she wrote. “I was in so much fear that I couldn’t take it.”
The unprovoked bear-spray attack on July 11, 2020, was one of two incidents Rogers, 30, was convicted of at the same time. The other one took place on May 23, 2021, inside Ashley Laframboise’s Niagara Crescent home.
Rogers and his girlfriend had been couch surfing there for two nights when Laframboise asked them to leave amid accusations someone had gone through her bedroom while she was gone. Laframboise screamed she was going to call police after suffering an abrasion during a physical scuffle.
“Mr. Rogers turned straight right at her and said, ‘I’m going to come back later and kill you,’” assistant Crown attorney Mikesh Mistry said while reading an agreed statement of facts. “Ms. Laframboise truly believed Mr. Rogers would return if he was given the opportunity to do so and called the police.”
Rogers pleaded guilty last week from the Sarnia Jail to three charges linked to the two incidents: assault with a weapon – the bear spray – assault, and uttering a death threat. Justice Stephen Paull imposed a 69-day, time-served jail sentence as Mistry and defense lawyer Terry Brandon both suggested.
“But I want you to be aware that regardless of what circumstances may have occurred between you and Ms. Elliott or Ms. Laframboise, the manner in which you dealt with that, resorting to the violence that you did is not acceptable,” the judge said to Rogers over Zoom from the courtroom to the jail.
Rogers had a prior criminal record, but these were his first convictions for violence, Paull noted. Brandon said her client, a Sarnia resident originally from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, is addicted to fentanyl and crystal meth.
He was previously convicted of drug trafficking in 2016 and received a suspended sentence and three years’ probation, the court heard.
But he’s currently on the opioid-replacement therapy drug Suboxone and is working on his sobriety, Brandon said.
“Mr. Rogers, you’re going to be getting out of custody,” Paull said. “It sounds like you are going to start taking some steps to get your life back on track and I hope that you will do that, OK sir?”
“Yes. Thank you, your honour,” he responded.
Rogers was also handed a one-year probation order banning him from contacting the two women and a 10-year weapons’ ban. Other charges were withdrawn.