Brampton man gets break on gun conviction

Judge spares 24-year-old man from penitentiary, tells him ‘I’m hoping you don’t come back’

A young man convicted of carrying a loaded handgun into a Hamilton apartment is getting a break after a judge spared him from going to penitentiary.

Alfred Amoa-Yeboah, 24, was sentenced Monday after a jury convicted him in November of carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a loaded, prohibited firearm. Yeboah was further convicted by Justice Toni Skarica, after the jury verdict, of breaching probation and breaching an order that he is prohibited from possessing a firearm.

On Monday, Skarica gave the Brampton man credit for 20 months for the time he has spent in jail since his arrest, and then gave him two more years less a day so he could service his sentence in a provincial correctional facility rather than federal penitentiary, where those sentenced to more than two years end up.

“So, I gave you a break,” Skarica told Amoa-Yeboah after sentencing him. “I’m just hoping you don’t come back. My experience is you will be, but ... good luck.”

Skarica told the young man he would not have given him the break had it not been for his father, Alfred Aboah, who earlier begged Skarica for leniency and said his son had changed since his arrest by Hamilton police two years ago.

Amoa-Yeboah himself told Skarica before sentencing that he was prepared to make a change in his life.

Skarica noted Amoa-Yeboah has a lengthy criminal record that includes drug trafficking, violence and a prohibition against possessing weapons. Skarica took into account his relative youth, his supportive father and that there was no suggestion that he used the loaded handgun to threaten anyone. The aggravating factors, Skarica found, were that he had a fully loaded handgun in a small apartment where people were consuming drugs and drinking alcohol, and that he has a relatively significant criminal record.

Amoa-Yeboah’s sentence includes three years of probation after his jail time, in which he is prohibited again from possession of weapons or non-medical drugs, and is to live with his parents in Brampton. At the time of his arrest in May, 2016, Hamilton police said Amoa-Yeboah tried to hide drugs and a loaded handgun during a disturbance call to a Hamilton apartment around Main Street East and Carrick Avenue.