Bank, store robber jailed
Irving Fosu said he was pressured to commit crimes
A young Dollard des Ormeaux resident who claimed he robbed three banks and a convenience store in the West Island because he was pressured by other people was sentenced on Friday to a threeyear prison term.
Irving Fosu, 23, sat stone-faced as Superior Court Justice Pierre Labrie delivered the decision at the Montreal courthouse. By contrast, Fosu’s father cried and held a tissue to his face while he learned that his son was heading to a federal penitentiary.
Fosu, who played bantam league football with a North Shore Lions team that won a championship in 2008, had pleaded guilty in December to charges related to four armed robberies he carried out in October and November 2012. In one case, on Oct. 29, 2012, he walked into a Bank of Montreal branch on Donegani Ave. in Pointe Claire armed with a pellet gun and a note that read: “Stay calm and no one gets hurt. I want $185,000.” During the holdup, he ordered employees into the bank’s vault and told them to open security deposit boxes. After emptying the registers, he made off with more than $16,000.
A few days later, he robbed a Scotia Bank branch on Provost St. in Lachine. In that case, Fosu, who is very tall, grabbed a security guard by the arm, pointed his pellet gun at him and ordered a cashier to give him money. The cashier handed him cash with two “explosive packs” hidden among the bills. The packs can be set off from a distance and are designed to spray a bank robber with paint. A client of the bank followed Fosu as he left and called 911. When he was apprehended minutes later, police officers found him covered in ink. He still had the pellet gun and $1,235 that was stolen from the bank.
At different stages in his case, Fosu claimed he carried out the robberies while under pressure from other people, but he would not identify them to police or in court. While delivering his decision on Friday, Labrie noted that Fosu agreed to give police a statement while hooked up to a lie detector. The device indicated Fosu lied throughout the statement.
Prosecutor Marie-Claude Bourassa had asked that Fosu be sentenced to a four-year prison term. She argued that the bank robberies were carried out with boldness and in a cold-blooded fashion. Defence lawyer Sharon Sandiford asked for a 12-month sentence and argued that Fosu was 19 years old when he carried out the robberies and has tried to change since his arrest. He was enrolled as a full-time student at Champlain College in Lennoxville last year.
But Labrie noted that while Fosu was a student in the Eastern Townships, he committed fraud in Sherbrooke by falsifying a register he was supposed to sign at a police station while he was out on bail in the armed robbery case.