Man given five-year sentence for crime spree

East Village attacks sexually motivated

A sexually motivated crime spree that ended with a Calgary couple being terrorized in their home has landed a city man a more than fiveyear prison term.

Provincial court Judge Margaret Keelaghan on Thursday said Richard Junior Grey’s offences would normally garner a 5½-year sentence.

But Keelaghan said when factoring in Grey’s Aboriginal background, which included growing up in a series of foster homes, a sentence of five years and a half month was warranted.

Coupled with credit for his pre-trial custody at the Calgary Remand Centre, Grey, 38, must serve an additional 44 months, Keelaghan ordered.

The judge noted a Gladue report on Grey’s Aboriginal upbringing painted a stark picture in which his parents were residential school victims and provided an environment “fraught with addiction and violence.”

She said Grey lived in 26 different foster homes beginning at the age of two.

“He experienced abuse in many of the foster homes,” Keelaghan said.

But the judge said she also had to look at Grey’s criminal past, which included 82 prior adult convictions, some for crimes of violence.

(Grey) experienced abuse in many of the foster homes.

Grey had just completed a 2 ½-year sentence for a break and enter with a sexual component when he went on his crime spree last Oct. 5 in the city’s East Village.

It began with him following a woman who raced to get into the hostel where she was staying.

But before the door closed behind her, Grey was able to get inside.

She hid in a second-floor washroom stall and Grey continued to follow, before pulling back the curtain where another woman was showering.

He fled that scene and attempted to enter a residence, before getting into a condominium through a screen door.

Grey entered a bedroom where a woman was sleeping. When she realized there was an intruder present she screamed for her husband, who came racing to her aid.

But the towering Grey — who is well over six feet tall — forced the couple into another room and locked it while he looked through the apartment, eventually returning with one of the woman’s dresses.

He ordered her to change into it and, when she initially refused, he threatened her, forcing her to capitulate.

Once she changed, he indicated he wanted to masturbate to her wearing the dress, but once he started, the husband jumped him and the woman escaped.

Police, who had been alerted by a security officer who saw the break-in, quickly arrived, but three of them struggled to subdue Grey before he was placed in a chokehold and rendered unconscious.

Keelaghan noted both husband and wife indicated in victim-impact statements that their lives will never be the same as a result of the attack.