The 25-year-old Sarnia-area man charged last week with child pornography-related offenses is the same person who is heading to trial next year for manslaughter, short records show.
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Those documents also shed additional light on the new charges – Sarnia police allege the accused filmed himself having sex with a girl, who was under age 16 at the time.
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Brandon Gilbert, 25, from Aamjiwnaang First Nation was initially charged with aggravated assault linked to what police said was a fight during a gathering on Maness Court in the First Nation south of Sarnia on Aug. 28, 2022. Dalton Bressette was taken to London hospital in critical condition, police said at the time.
But Bressette, a 26-year-old father of three, died on Sept. 4, 2022 and Gilbert was arrested 11 days later and charged instead with manslaughter. A two-week trial is expected to start in Sarnia’s Superior Court of Justice in January 2025.
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In the meantime, a new case surfaced last week. Sarnia police announced Feb. 5 Gilbert, who was out on bail, was arrested on the heels of a sexual assault investigation by its criminal investigations division. He was charged with sexual assault, sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, making child pornography, possessing child pornography, and two counts of failing to comply with a release order, police said.
All but the breach charges are linked to the same girl and took place between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, court records show. The making and possessing child pornography charges are linked to an allegation of a video of the accused having sex with her, they say. The Crown has since asked for the charges to be backdated to Nov. 1, 2022, through to Dec. 31, 2023.
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The girl’s identity is protected by a publication ban, but she was either 14 or 15 at the time, according to social media.
Gilbert appeared briefly in a Sarnia courtroom the day he was arrested. He was kept in custody and ordered not to contact five people, including the girl. He was back in court again Friday through a video feed from the Sarnia Jail, where defense lawyer Ken Marley told a justice of the peace they’re working on a bail plan.
Gilbert got out on bail three separate times in the fall of 2022. He was first granted $4,000 lease five days after being charged with aggravated assault with a list of rules and a curfew. After the charge was upgraded he was released on lease again, this time for $20,000 and under house arrest, on Sept. 21, 2022.
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But Gilbert was arrested a third time, on Oct. 21, 2022, and charged with two counts of failing to comply with a release order. Following a long bail hearing on Nov. 8, 2022, Gilbert was once again released. He spent a total of 19 days in jail.
A trial was expected to be held last May for the breach charges, but at the last minute he opted to plead guilty to one of them. Justice Paul Kowalyshyn later granted him a conditional discharge on probation, but also lectured him.
“You breached literally within days. The ink was barely dry,” he said during a sentencing hearing in September.
Gilbert had been ordered not to contact his sister unless he was being supervised by his safety, his father, and to follow the rules of his father’s home, which did not allow drinking. But on Oct. 18, 2022, less than a month after his second release, his sister came over to the home while Gilbert’s father was at work. Family members found empty spaces scattered throughout the home and signs of suspected drug use.
The new breach charges allege he either wasn’t living with his sureties or following the rules of their home during the time frame linked to the sexual assault investigation and that he wasn’t at home or with his sureties the day he was arrested.
None of the new charges, or the manslaughter charge, have been tested in court. Gilbert will be back in court Tuesday.
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