Ten-year weapons ban for Niagara Falls man

A 63-year-old man arrested in July after local police found a cache of weapons inside a Niagara Falls home was warned to abide by the law in the future.

“You don’t have that many good years left to squander,” Judge Joseph Nadel told James Carrier in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines on Thursday.

The Niagara Falls man was arrested in July after a female acquaintance called 911 to report she had been assaulted.

During the course of an argument, court was told, Carrier had pulled on the woman’s tongue, causing a laceration.

When Niagara Regional Police arrived, officers discovered 11 firearms including two shotguns, as well as 350 rounds of ammunition.

Carrier pleaded guilty to several charges including assault and careless storage of a firearm at an earlier date and appeared in court Thursday for sentencing.

He was sentenced to time served — having spent the equivalent of a six-month jail term in pretrial custody — and placed on probation for two years and banned from having any firearms or ammunition in his possession for the next 10 years.

“This has been quite a sobering experience for Mr. Carrier,” defence lawyer V.J. Singh told the judge.

“The reality is, we have a good man who loses his way when he drinks.”

The judge agreed.

“This was an incident fuelled by the consumption of alcohol,” Nadel said.

“Alcohol, anger and weaponry are a very dangerous, volatile mix.”