Getaway driver sentenced

Cong Jie Tan pleads guilty to robbery charges

A man involved in a May drug deal and who acted as a getaway driver appeared in court Monday. Cong Jie Tan pleaded guilty to robbery and failure-to-appear in court. Tan was given credit at time and a half for time served already, which amounted to 192 days.

The getaway driver in a May drug deal gone bad was sentenced Monday in Summerside provincial court.

Cong Jie Tan pleaded guilty to robbery and for a failure-toappear in court charge from July. He will serve three more days in provincial jail for his part in the incident. Weapons charges were stayed. Tan was given credit at time and a half for time served already, which amounted to 192 days.

The 28-year-old Tan is married with a child. He had no record before the incident.

“When he got here, he kind of fell in with the wrong crowd,” said Crown attorney John Diamond. In May, Tan and three other men thought they had bought ‘speed’ from two people staying at a motel in Summerside.

Turned out, it wasn’t the drugs they had expected. The men had paid $200 for crushed up vitamins, Diamond told the court in his statement of facts.

Once they discovered the substance was fake, one of the coaccused told Tan to return them to the motel.

Tan did and waited in the car while the others went in to the room. When it was taking longer than he thought it would, he entered the room in time to witness some of the attack that left the alleged drug dealers injured. He then drove the men home. One of the men involved, 32-year-old Jeremy Stephens, was killed when police officers tried to arrest him shortly after. Stephens’ family members were in court Monday and were upset at the sentence.

The other two men accused in the case have already been sentenced. Aaron Christopher Prichard, 34, received 16 months. Scott Bruce Dalziel, 40 will serve 12 months.