Former Rattler receives absolute discharge for roll in air-soft shooting

A former Rattlers basketball player was granted an absolute discharge by a Medicine Hat judge Thursday, after entering a guilty plea for his part in shooting at people with a BB gun from a vehicle last year.

In granting the absolute discharge, Judge Ted Fischer went one step further than the conditional discharge requested by defence counsel, explaining that he didn’t want to burden probation.

“I don’t want to see you here again,” he said to 24-year-old Kieron Burgess.

Police responded to the 400 block of North Railway Street on Nov. 25, 2017 at 1:30 a.m., as a vehicle was driving past groups of people shooting at them with an air-soft gun. One woman was struck by the BBs in the face, suffering a minor injury.

Based on witness description, police located a vehicle a short time later, finding in it two air-soft guns. Burgess and Collin Ralko, 22, were both charged with assault with a weapon.

Both were members of Medicine Hat College’s basketball team, but were subsequently removed from the squad.

Defence counsel Robert Robbenhaar told the court that Burgess had just come to Canada on a student visa from Bermuda to attend MHC and play on the basketball team.

On the night the incident occurred, Burgess was picked up by his teammate, the airsoft guns were in the vehicle already, and he was told “they do it all the time.”

“It was an impulsive, silly decision made in an effort to belong,” said Robbenhaar, about how being new to Canada and wanting to belong with his teammates led Burgess to give in to peer pressure.

Immediately upon arrest, Burgess admitted to what he had done, said Robbenhaar, and submitted a full letter of apology the next day to the victim upon his own volition. Burgess has no prior criminal record.

A conditional discharge, unlike an absolute discharge, would have meant a period of probation would have to be fulfilled.

The assault with a weapon charge against Ralko still remains before the court.