Nine-year sentence for drive-by shooting
Justice Clyde Smith says he can only think of one matter in his veteran career that disturbed him more than Dylan Hamre’s case.
“The only case that offended me more, sir, is when four women’s bodies were found in a car at the bottom of the canal in Kingston,” Justice Smith said. “That is the scale of the behaviour in my view. It is appalling.”
On Dec. 8, Smith sentenced Hamre to nine years in federal prison. In November, he found Hamre guilty of several charges stemming from a 2016 drive-by shooting in Peterborough which left a man with a bullet in his hand.
Hamre was found guilty of aggravated assault, discharging a prohibited firearm with intent to wound, possession of a loaded firearm, unauthorized possession of a firearm, weapons trafficking and possession of a firearm while prohibited.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Peterborough police were called to 266 McDonnel St., on Oct. 1, 2016, around 9 p.m. after two men drove through a back alleyway and opened fire. Several bullets struck the rear wooden fence, while another bullet hit a man in the right hand.
“It shows a complete, utter and total disregard for the lives and safety of the other people in the community,” Smith added.
It was assistant Crown attorney Andrew Midwood’s theory that after the shooting, and before Hamre was arrested in separate drug and gun investigations, Hamre asked an associate to store three guns for him, including the Ruger 10/22 Archangel semi-automatic gun that fired the bullets in the drive-by shooting.
The guns were located two months after the shooting, when police conducted a search warrant at a Peterborough home in connection to a drug investigation. It focused on the Ugly Crew, a group known to sell and carry guns in Peterborough.
“This wasn’t a one-off,” Midwood said, noting Hamre is deeply entrenched in the drug culture. “It was a reckless disregard for human life.”
During the trial, Smith heard that the man hit by the bullet wasn’t the intended target. The intended victim was a man who had stole cocaine from Hamre. Earlier in the day, before the shooting, Hamre approached his target at the Chemong Road Walmart with the gun in a duffel bag, and told the man to make sure his daughter wasn’t home because he was coming for what was his.
In his sentencing decision, Smith said Hamre’s involvement in the drug subculture brought him to the point where he was standing in a crowded Walmart with easily accessible guns.
“You’re standing there with a duffel bag with a ... gun in it, showing it to a man standing there holding the hand of his six-year-old daughter,” Smith said. “That is an appalling thing to contemplate.”
Further, Smith added said Hamre’s lack of decency to stand up at sentencing and apologize or express any sort of remorse shows a negative harbinger for Hamre’s future.