Canines foil Ste Anne caper

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This article was published 19/03/2015 (3319 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He may have just gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for a couple of meddling dogs.

A masked man who last year stole more than $9,000 from Ste Anne Hotel demanded the cash from the lone employee working that night—his own unsuspecting girlfriend.

Nathaniel More-Harrison, who his lawyer said immediately regretted his actions, later went to his girlfriend’s residence for the night and hid the money outside.

“And that very morning and I’m not making this up,” said Crown attorney Jeff Nichols as he described how another resident noticed their dogs had ripped open a bag of money.

That’s when the victim of the robbery surely understood, the Crown mused, it was her boyfriend, 20 years old at the time, who wore a mask and bandana into the hotel, carried a knife and spoke to her in a low, threatening voice before 1 a.m. on Feb. 26, 2014. He then tied up her wrists using zip ties and ran away before she contacted Ste Anne police.

Oddly, the couple had joked in the past, usually when drinking alcohol, that they could stage a robbery when she was working. As the idea percolated in his head, she resigned at one point that if he wanted to carry out the robbery he should just do it because it was stressing her out, the Crown said.

He did, and his premeditated actions netted him an 18-month jail sentence in Steinbach provincial court on Thursday. More-Harrison pled guilty in December for the robbery and wearing a disguise with intent to commit an indictable offence.

“When we say this case is bizarre that may be the understatement of the century,” said defence attorney Kathy Bueti. “If you saw this in a movie, you wouldn’t believe that it was true.”

Bueti said the couple’s jokes only became serious when More-Harrison’s financial situation worsened. He had been unable to work because of injuries from a car crash and had recently lost a child he was about to have in a prior relationship.

More-Harrison’s decision to rob the hotel was impulsive, she said. “He was talking himself out of it the entire way there. In the last moment, he did it.”

The restorative resolution report spoke approvingly of More-Harrison, said Judge Ray Wyant. He was deemed a low risk to reoffend, though the accused suggested he can do even better.

“I was told today that there is no such thing as someone who has no risk to ever reoffend, I am that person. I will never do anything like this again,” said More-Harrison.

Wyant refuted that this was not in his nature.

“That’s exactly who you are, that’s a part of you now,” said Wyant. “Not that it’s out of character, it’s a part of your character, it’s a part of your life now.”

Wyant said, stripping away the case’s more quirky elements, this was still a deliberate crime.

“This is a premeditated robbery by a sober individual who had time to think about it,” the judge said.

Wyant said he accepts this was an offence borne out of desperation but said it does not excuse More-Harrison’s conduct.

Wyant said bar personnel wanted the man dealt with to the full extent of the law.

“We now fear strangers when they come into our bar,” said Wyant, recalling statements from the report. “We didn’t fear them before, we fear them now.”

More-Harrison will be on probation for two years after his release from custody.

He and the robbery victim are no longer in a relationship.