Man loses appeal of sentence for driving over gas attendant

SYLVIA STROJEK

The Alberta Court of Appeal has upheld the sentence of a Calgary man for killing a gas station attendant who was trying to stop him from stealing fuel.

Joshua Cody Mitchell is serving 11 years in prison after being convicted last year of manslaughter and hit-and-run in the 2015 death of Maryam Rashidi.

Rashidi, who was 35, died when Mitchell ran her over as he drove away from a Calgary gas station without paying for $113 worth of gasoline.

Mitchell’s lawyer argued his client’s prison term should be reduced to seven years.

He argued, among other things, that the trial judge was too harsh in choosing from a range of possible sentences for manslaughter.

The Appeal Court ruled the judge balanced all the factors and legal principles in the case.

“The sentence was stern but had to be,” the panel of appeal judges wrote in a decision released on Friday.

They did reduce a lifetime driving ban Mitchell faced to 10 years.

“For a person still in his 20s this is not, in our view, realistic and it serves no compelling ... purpose,” the judges wrote.

“It does not depreciate the magnitude of his offence to recognize that the appellant will be a different person in the years to come and should be encouraged to live a constructive life then.”