Pair sentenced for roles in ambush slaying of Sarnia boilermaker

One Sarnia man was sentenced to four years in prison and another to 22 months of house arrest Friday for their roles in the 2022 ambush shooting death of a Sarnia boilermaker in a wooded area near Petrolia.

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Andrew Chute, 45, was shot 11 times without warning around 5 am on April 14, 2022 in the parking lot of a nature trail in the tiny Lambton County community of Marthaville. Bullets were fired into his head, neck, torso and upper extremities.

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Jason Nahmabin and James Armstrong, both 44-year-old Sarnia residents, were arrested within weeks of each other in spring 2022 and charged with first-degree murder. Armstrong also was charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

But those charges were dropped after both men pleaded guilty in September to accessory after the fact to murder.

The two shooters are still unidentified and at large and the gun hasn’t been recovered.

The Crown and defense made arguments at a sentencing hearing last month and Superior Court Justice Russell Raikes came back with his decision Friday before a gallery of about 25 people, including many of Chute’s relative: four years in prison for Nahmabin and 22 months of house arrest for Armstrong.

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“They may never see justice and never achieve even a modicum of closure,” the judge said of Chute’s family, noting the shooters haven’t been caught.

At the sentencing hearing, assistant Crown attorney Suzanne LaSha asked Raikes to sentence Nahmabin to five years in prison – calling him a key player – and Armstrong, who had more limited involvement, to two years in jail.

Leah Gensey, Nahmabin’s lawyer, suggested 2.5 to three years, pushing for a time-served sentence based on her client’s time in pre-plea custody. Nahmabin, who has a prior criminal record, has been in jail since April 2022, racking up 31.5 months’ credit. That will be taken off his four-year sentence.

Armstrong’s lawyer, Lucas O’Hara, asked for an 18-month to two-year sentence to be served at home instead of in jail. Armstrong, a first-time offender, was granted $40,000 lease 23 days after his arrest.

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LaSha opposed house arrest.

Both men apologized to Chute’s family at the end of the hearing. His parents, sister and daughter filed victim-impact statements, but they weren’t read out in court.

But Raikes read them and noted the impact Chute’s death had on his family.

“It is a far greater and lonelier place than it was. His death has left a hole that cannot be filled,” the judge said.

Lambton OPP said Chute was shot in a targeted attack, opened dedicated tip lines to help track down potential suspects and released photos of a gray Acura they believed drove two suspects to London that Thursday morning. Few other details were available until the pair’s guilty pleas last fall in a Sarnia courtroom.

The court heard via an agreed statement of facts Armstrong, who was addicted to cocaine, regularly drove people connected to the Sarnia-Lambton drug subculture around in his mother’s 2012 gold Ford Escape for drugs or cash. Nahmabin, a former construction worker and avid hunter from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, and Chute, a longtime member of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 128, had only met a few weeks prior, but had ties to the same drug community.

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Armstrong drove Nahmabin, who’d been looking for Chute to help collect drug debts, and another man to a Devine Street apartment building around 3 am on April 14, 2022. Nahmabin and Chute came outside an hour later and, after dropping another man off , headed for Chatham, the court heard.

Armstrong believed Nahmabin and Chute were going there for a drug deal, while Nahmabin, instructed by an unknown third party via his cellphone, thought Chute was going to help him collect outstanding debts.

But as Chute, who appeared to be heavily intoxicated after coming out of the apartment, slept in the car, Nahmabin was told by the other person the plan had changed: they were instead meeting in the Marthaville Habitat Management Area.

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Additional instructions were given about who would get in which vehicle after another car arrived there. The trio parked, got out and had a cigarette while they waited.

About 20 minutes later, a gray Acura Nahmabin had previously borrowed from two friends for his third-party contact pulled in. Two men wearing masks got out and opened fire on Chute, with one bullet grazing Armstrong’s mother’s car, the court heard.

Armstrong and Nahmabin had no idea that was going to happen, but neither checked on Chute or called 911. Chute’s body was found face down in a pool of blood about two hours later by a nearby resident, who called police.

Armstrong, terrified but doing as instructed, got in the Acura with the shooters while Nahmabin boarded the Escape. Armstrong drove the men to a newer row house development on Blackwell Boulevard near Highbury Avenue in London. Nahmabin drove to his Sarnia-area home.

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Back in Sarnia later that morning, Armstrong and Nahmabin exchanged messages – they were deleted, but police recovered them – about not talking about what happened and wiping down the car, the court heard.

Nahmabin was arrested and charged on April 29, 2022. Armstrong, initially believed to be a witness, was interviewed and released twice by police, though his story changed dramatically. He was arrested amid a third interview on May 31, 2022, when he confessed to driving the shooters to London.

Police canvassed the neighborhood where he dropped them off and seized video footage of the Acura there that night, but the two masked suspects were still unidentified as of Friday and the firearm has not been found.

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@ObserverTerry

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