Drug deal fight ‘extremely poor reflection on your character,’ defendants told

Two men who participated in a gang assault during a drug deal gone wrong in St. Catharines can’t blame “falling in with a bad crowd” as the reason for their criminal behaviour, a judge said Friday.

“Lots of people make the wrong decisions … lots of people hang around with the wrong crowd and get into trouble,” Judge Fergus O’Donnell said in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines.

“Here’s a news flash, gentlemen, you choose your friends, you choose who you hang out with and you choose what you do.”

Thomas McBride, 27, and 22year-old Emmanuel Chinoya received suspended sentences and where placed on probation for three years after they pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. McBride was also convicted of possession of fentanyl.

The duo were arrested in Sept. 2019 after two men were assaulted at a residence on Niagara Street in St. Catharines.

Court heard a drug deal between several individuals went wrong and two men were punched and kicked by a group of five to 10 men who identified themselves as gang members from Toronto and Durham.

Police found the defendants hiding in a closet at a nearby residence. When McBride was searched, police found heroin and fentanyl in his pocket.

The judge said the defendants’ actions that day demonstrated “an extremely poor reflection on your character and your decision-making.”

He said anyone who participates in a group assault runs the risk of being branded a “thug, coward and a brute.”

“You have to decide whether you want to go through life with those labels or whether you want to take this, but it behind you, get on with your lives and do more constructive things, the kind of things that might make your parents proud of you.”

They two men were also banned from having firearms in their possession.