Man guilty in violent home invasion
The third brother accused in a violent home invasion that left the victim with a shoe print on his face is guilty as charged, a Saskatoon judge ruled.
Daniel Brian Loree, 47, was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for breaking into a Dodsland man’s home on May 5, 2011. Minus credit for time on remand, Loree has just under two and half years left to serve.
Originally, Loree was jointly charged with his brothers Arnold Loree and Curtis Mikituk. His brothers pleaded guilty to some of the charges and were each sentenced to two years in prison plus three years of probation, but Loree pleaded not guilty and went to trial in April.
On Friday, Justice Murray Acton found Loree guilty on all charges: robbery, extortion, break and enter, uttering threats and carrying a jackknife for a dangerous purpose.
The charges all related to when Loree and his two brothers drove to Trevis Leschinski’s house in Dodsland, kicked in the door and attacked Leschinski, according to Acton’s ruling.
The two older brothers, Daniel and Arnold, kicked and punched Leschinski, demanding he pay $42,000 they said was owed to Arnold.
“They continued to punch him and kick him in the face to the point where Mr. Leschinski had a Nike footprint imprinted on his face from the incident,” Acton wrote.
While they assaulted Leschinski, Mikituk “was scurrying through the house” filling a duffel bag with Leschinski’s possessions, including a laptop computer and X-box gaming system.
Acton wrote that he found Leschinski to be “a most believable, honest and forthright witness” when he testified at Loree’s trial.
Mikituk, who had confessed to RCMP in a videotaped statement, also testified in court, but said he lied to police. At trial, Mikituk’s testimony “had very little air of reality and appeared to be spoken more for the purpose of appeasing his brother, the accused, than for its truthfulness,” Acton wrote.