Man sentenced on several charges

Committing three crimes at a city store more than a year ago has earned a southern Alberta man a three-month jail sentence.

Nelson Keith Koci was sentenced Tuesday in Lethbridge provincial court after he pleaded guilty to charges of theft under $5,000, assault and mischief causing damage.

Court was told Koci was caught stealing $100 worth of items from Walmart April 11, 2019 and was detained by store security while they waited for police to arrive. Koci became upset at being detained and forced his way out of the room in which he was being detained, in the process striking a loss prevention officer.

During his “reckless” flight from security personnel, Koci ran into two electronic detectors set up by the exits to detect goods being taken from the store but for which customers have not paid. Each detector is worth about

$2,000, Crown Prosecutor Clayton Giles pointed out.

Koci picked himself up after crashing into the detectors and fled, but he had already been identified and was later arrested.

Koci also pleaded guilty to four counts of failing to attend court — three times in 2019 and once in January of this year — and to two counts of being unlawfully at large after he failed to show up for a 72day intermittent jail sentence and a subsequent court hearing relating to the offence.

Koci was sentenced to one day on each of the four failures to attend court, to run concurrently with his threemonth jail sentence, and 30 days on each charge of being unlawfully at large, to run consecutively to the other sentences, for a total of five months. He was, however, given credit for time already spent in custody, reducing his sentence by eight days.