Getaway driver jailed

The driver of a Vanscoy robbery getaway vehicle says he did it as payment for a $600 drug debt.

Kyle Kuzma-cole, 25, pleaded guilty Friday to robbery and was sentenced to two years less one day in jail.

He has already served nine months of the sentence since his arrest a few days after the May 3, 2011, robbery, resulting in 15 months remaining to be served.

Kuzma-cole did not enter the hotel, but video surveillance recorded him parking, then getting out of a vehicle and trying the door just before the business opened around 11 a.m., Crown prosecutor Gary Parker told Judge Peter Kolenick.

A few minutes later two other men got out of the vehicle and entered the hotel carrying an SKS assault rifle and a crowbar. The pair demanded cash from the till and the VLTS.

The video showed them getting into the vehicle driven by KuzmaCole. The vehicle was abandoned and later found with the assault rifle still in it.

Two men will be arrested “down the road” in connection with the robbery, Parker said.

Kuzma-cole also pleaded guilty to possession of a stolen cellphone and credit card that went missing from a woman’s car about a year before the hotel robbery.

A phone store employee told police he knew Kuzma-cole before the accused came in and tried to activate the stolen cellphone. The employee refused to activate it and kept it before later turning it over to police.

Surveillance video from a convenience store also showed KuzmaCole using the credit card to make a purchase.

He was sentenced to four months concurrent for those offences.

Defence lawyer Morris Bodner said his client is afflicted with a rare disorder known as histadelia that causes hyperactivity, compulsions, blank mind episodes, inner tensions and profuse sweating.

Since his recent diagnosis, Kuzma-cole’s condition has improved and he looks forward to returning to construction work, Bodnar said.