Mayor wants prison-transfer system overhauled following killing
METCHOSIN — The mayor of a Vancouver Island community where two prisoners are accused of killing a man after they escaped from a minimum-security prison says they never should have been there in the first place.
John Ranns says he’s warning people in Metchosin to stay vigilant as long as there’s a loophole allowing prisoners to be transferred to low-security facilities through an override of their security classification when they still pose a risk.
“The wrong people got sent,” Ranns said.
The RCMP said on Friday that James Busch and Zachary Armitage have been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Martin Payne, whose body was found in his home on July 12 last year.
Police were alerted on July 8, 2019, that the two men had escaped from the minimum-security William Head Institution outside Victoria. An off-duty officer spotted the men while walking his dog almost two days later, leading to their arrest.
It was only when Payne, who was 60, failed to show up for work that officers found his body days later.
Busch, 42, was serving an indeterminate sentence for second-degree murder and assault. Armitage, 30, was convicted of offences including a violent aggravated assault and a violent robbery.
In a sentencing decision after the escape, provincial court Judge Roger Cutler said Armitage had served eight years of a 14-year sentence when he fled the prison.
On July 7, during a walk along the water, the two prisoners decided to escape by walking along the shoreline of the oceanfront facility during low tide, the decision said.
“Given the offender’s prior violent record and his history of escaping lawful custody, including four prior convictions, I was perplexed as to why at the time of his escape the offender was serving his sentence at a minimum-security institution,” Cutler wrote in the decision.
“This situation was particularly troubling as the information provided to the court indicated that the offender had recently escaped in 2016 and less than two years later, in February 2018, he had been assessed as a medium-security or moderate risk to escape on the security reclassification scale.”
However, a week after the assessment, it was overridden to minimum security, the decision said.
Two months after that, Armitage was transferred to William Head.
Cutler said he reviewed an internal Correctional Service Canada report provided by the Crown recommending the override because Armitage had made positive efforts and progress to rehabilitate himself. His case-management team didn’t believe he posed a risk of escape, Cutler said.
The escape is understandably disconcerting to the public, the judge added.
“The public is entitled to expect that those incarcerated for violent criminal conduct and who have an extensive and recent escape history are rarely, and only with solid reasoning, placed in a position where escaping incarceration may be achieved by merely walking along the shoreline at low tide,” he said.