Vancouver fentanyl trafficker with 69 prior convictions gets nine years in jail
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:10:03 +0000
A man who was convicted of possessing fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking and possessing a loaded firearm has been sentenced to nine years in prison.
In June, Warren Brett Oswald, 37, pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver to the drug and firearm offences after an unsuccessful attempt to get the evidence excluded.
On July 1, 2017, he was seen leaving a suite in a strata complex at 138 East Hastings St. that was suspected of being used for drug trafficking. Oswald assaulted a woman as she was tying to leave the suite, slamming the door on her and then punching her in the face three times before she managed to flee, according to a sentencing ruling.
After Oswald left the building he was arrested by police, who seized one round of ammunition from him as well as a small quantity of methamphetamine and a crack pipe. Inside a backpack that he was carrying police found 1.4 kilograms of meth, 535 grams of cocaine, 428 g of fentanyl and $28,000.
When police executed a search warrant at the suite, they found a loaded .40-calibre Smith and Wesson firearm and more drugs. By possessing the weapon Oswald violated a lifetime firearms prohibition imposed from a prior conviction. The total value of the drugs seized was between $106,000 and $114,400.
Oswald, who said he’d struggled with mental-health issues including depression, has 69 convictions since 1998, including five drug-related convictions and 11 violence-related convictions.
In his ruling, Justice Nigel Kent said that the two offences to which Oswald pleaded guilty cut to the “very fabric of society” and required a “very strong message” of denunciation, condemnation and deterrence. The judge noted that little needed to be said about the “opioid crisis” in general and the “scourge” of fentanyl in particular.
Oswald, who has battled an addiction to meth and fentanyl since first moving to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2014, acknowledged the harm he’d caused the community. But the judge said the offender had made no reference to the fact that the quantity of fentanyl in his possession represented at street value a “potential” death sentence for hundreds of people.
Oswald was involved in a multi-kilo trafficking operation and while he’d taken steps toward rehabilitation while in custody, the aggravating factors in the case were significant and needed to be given substantial weight, said the judge.
“Mr. Oswald’s conduct was predatory in the extreme,” said Kent, adding that the offender knew full well the extent of death and misery inflicted by fentanyl upon the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
The situation was exacerbated by Oswald’s proclivity for physical violence and his possession of a firearm, and his actions displayed a high degree of moral culpability, said the judge.
“The quantity of fentanyl and its lethally high level of concentration places this case at the high end of the sentencing range applicable to mid-level trafficking in that controlled substance,” said Kent.
Oswald was sentenced to nine years in prison for the two offences, reduced to 5 1/2 years after he gets credit for pre-sentence custody. He was also ordered to provide a DNA sample.