A lawyer for one of the teens facing firearms charges after Sarnia police said a 19-year-old Aamjiwnaang man was shot in the shoulder told a judge there was no animosity between any of them and it was an accident
A lawyer for one of the teens facing firearms charges after Sarnia police said a 19-year-old Aamjiwnaang man was shot in the shoulder told a judge there was no animosity between any of them and it was an accident.
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Still, Aiden Ransom-Oliver, 19, was fortunate no one was killed that night, she said.
“That’s not lost on my client,” Ransom-Oliver’s lawyer, Terry Brandon, said.
Justice Paul Kowalyshyn, who sentenced Ransom-Oliver to one year of house arrest for carelessly using a firearm and possessing a firearm without a license, used the phrase, ‘But for the grace of God go I.’
“This could have been far worse,” the judge told him.
Ransom-Oliver was one of five young men drinking and watching TV in Tristen Nahmabin’s bedroom at his father’s home on White Circle in Aamjiwnaang First Nation on Dec. 20. Nahmabin was sitting in a computer chair hunched over his phone with the other four behind him when he heard a loud bang and his shoulder went numb.
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Most of the men fled as Nahmabin screamed in pain. He was taken to hospital with a horizontal gash across his shoulder blades, but he’s since made a full recovery.
The firearm was never recovered, but police found a bullet in the wall and a small bag with .22 caliber ammunition in Ransom-Oliver’s possession. Along with possessing a firearm without a license and careless use of a firearm, Ransom-Oliver also pleaded guilty recently to breaching a release order as he was banned from weapons at the time.
Nila Mulpuru, Lambton’s acting Crown attorney, said they were very serious offenses and it was just by good luck no one was killed.
“It is conduct that placed every single individual in that home at great risk,” she said.
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Nahmabin didn’t write a victim-impact statement and Ransom-Oliver declined a chance to address the court.
Mulpuru and Brandon suggested one year of house arrest, which features GPS tracking and a ban on drinking alcohol, and another year of probation, a sentence Kowalyshyn agreed to impose. Ransom-Oliver can’t contact Nahmabin or his co-accused.
Jacob Oliver, 19, was also charged with unauthorized possession of a firearm and careless use of a firearm. The charges against him haven’t been tested in court. He returns to court Thursday.
Both accused were released on $2,000 bail a few days after the shooting.
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