JAIL FOR SUV THIEF
Repeat offender sentenced
NORTH BATTLEFORD A repeat offender with a history of dangerously driving stolen vehicles has avoided a penitentiary sentence, but will serve his longest jail sentence after prompting an Amber Alert last summer.
Johnathan Ryann Gunville stole a running Mercedes SUV without knowing a six-year-old girl was inside, less than a month after serving a sentence for stealing a vehicle, evading police and breaching his conditions.
In the past, he had received mostly conditional sentences, probation and driving prohibitions. On Wednesday, Judge Bruce Bauer sentenced Gunville, 20, to nearly 32 months in custody, with two years less a day left to serve after receiving 230 days of enhanced remand credit. He recommended the sentence be served at Saskatchewan Hospital in Battleford.
The global sentence encompasses Gunville’s guilty pleas in connection with the Amber Alert on Sept. 18, 2018: abandoning a child, vehicle theft, driving while disqualified and dangerous driving.
Gunville took the SUV, which had a fob system that unlocks the vehicle if the key holder is nearby, from outside a North Battleford strip mall, court heard during Gunville’s sentencing hearing last month. He drove it down the wrong side of Highway 16 before realizing the girl was in the back seat.
Panicked, he left the vehicle in an industrial area, endangering the six-year-old girl’s life, Bauer said.
She wasn’t found until the next morning when a man recognized the missing SUV and called police. The girl was wearing light clothing and required regular medication for epilepsy. She couldn’t call for help because she has autism and is non-verbal.
Gunville’s 32-month sentence also included driving-related offences stemming from four days after the Amber Alert, when he took a stolen truck on a joyride, running stop signs, swerving in and out of traffic and doing doughnuts in the middle of a street.
Court heard about his two-year span of vehicle offences and the exhaustive support services he has previously received. Defence lawyer Bill Archer, who argued for a provincial jail sentence, said jail will be a wake-up call for his client, and the three-year probation period that will follow gives him a fighting chance at rehabilitation.
“Some members of the public will often feel the only price we should be paying for ... is a rope to hang him. But that’s not Canada. Our justice system is based on hope, and we can’t abandon that.”
According to a pre-sentence report, Gunville was dropped on his head as an infant and is cognitively impaired. He also has mental health and addiction issues and requires constant monitoring, structure and support.
“He’s a six- or eight-year-old trapped in a 20-year-old’s body,” Archer said outside North Battleford provincial court.
Last month, Crown prosecutor Lee Hnatiuk argued for a threeyear penitentiary sentence, preferably at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, where Gunville would get proper programming.
“Only time will tell” if he lands back in the court system, Hnatiuk said on Wednesday.
Gunville will be banned from driving for five years after the conclusion of any pre-existing driving prohibition.