Man who confined pair at gunpoint in elevator imprisoned

A man who forced two men into an elevator at gunpoint, causing an eight-hour standoff at the 2nd Avenue lofts in downtown Saskatoon, says he wants to take anger management programming in prison.

“Made a few mistakes there, had a pretty crazy path, so whatever, just do my two years and head forward and try not to look back,” Jesse John Theodore Shutiak, 27, said during his sentencing hearing in Saskatoon provincial court.

“Time to grow up?” Judge Shannon Metivier asked before accepting a joint submission from the Crown and defence, sentencing Shutiak to two years on top of his 81-day enhanced remand credit. “A long time ago,” he replied. He pleaded guilty and received a one-year sentence for pointing a firearm at two men, another year for using a firearm while committing an indictable offence and a concurrent year for unlawfully confining the men on Feb. 12.

Court heard Shutiak entered an elevator from the second floor of 120 23rd St. E., armed with a pump-action shotgun. He took it up to the fifth floor, where he had previously had an interaction with two men, Crown prosecutor Tyla Olenchuk said, reading from a police report.

One man was standing outside the elevator doors, while the other man was inside another elevator. Olenchuk said Shutiak pointed the gun at both men and forced them into the same elevator, where he yelled at them for two minutes before running down the stairwell to his second-floor suite.

The entire thing was captured on

surveillance video and both men identified Shutiak as the gunman, Olenchuk said.

Defence lawyer Brent Little said his client was acting pre-emptively because he thought the men were going to invade his suite.

Little said Shutiak has positive family support and “is a young man with some promise.” He steered clear of drugs while on remand — something Shutiak said he considered a feat after observing that “there sure are a lot of drugs in provincial jail.” Although Little indicated substance abuse programming would be Shutiak’s main focus while in prison, Shutiak told court he no longer considers it to be his main issue.

He received 81 days time served for missing four probation appointments and for mischief. Court heard Shutiak threw a television off the balcony of his Sixth Avenue North apartment suite on Jan. 20, damaging two trucks parked below.

During his arrest, Olenchuk said police reported Shutiak was “verbally abusive towards officers and antagonistic.”

His sentence also includes a 10year ban from possessing firearms.