A Vancouver woman who moved across the country to take a job running a marijuana grow house was sentenced in a Windsor courtroom Wednesday to six months in jail.

Cai Yan Chen, 37, was arrested on Feb. 29, 2012, after police found more than 14,000 marijuana plants growing in a home on Seymour Street in Lakeshore. If sold by the pound, the pot was worth $250,000.

Chen’s husband at the time, Wen Ping Hu, was also arrested, but charges against him were dropped when Chen pleaded guilty. Court heard the couple is no longer together.

Chen left a young daughter behind with her mother when she got into the grow op business. The mother subsequently moved to Ontario, as well.

Court heard Chen tended to the plants in the sophisticated hydroponic operation. The hydro meter was bypassed so the amount of electricity the building was using wouldn’t raise suspicion. This put the entire residential neighbourhood at risk, said Superior Court Justice Gregory Verbeem. If a fire broke out there, emergency responders may have been electrocuted.

While Chen may have been “only the gardener,” she did not help police arrest anyone else involved in the operation. Still, Verbeem said, Chen is “an unsophisticated individual who has been left to bear the brunt of the criminality of others.”

Chen’s lawyer had asked Verbeem to sentence Chen to house arrest. Verbeem rejected this saying, “a conditional sentence is not appropriate in all the circumstances.” This was a large-scale operation in a residential area that put unwitting neighbours at risk, the judge said.

The federal Crown prosecutor, Ed Posliff, asked for a term of real jail of up to 18 months.

Verbeem said a “meaningful custodial sentence” was warranted, but not one as long as the drug prosecutor suggested. Chen has no prior criminal record either in Canada or in China where she was born, the judge noted.

If arrested today under new minimum sentencing legislation, Chen would have been sentenced to at least two years in a federal penitentiary. Instead, Chen will be eligible for early release in about 3½ months.

Chen must repay Hydro One $50,000 for the stolen electricity and the cost of repairing the illegal work done to bypass the meter.

She will also forfeit lights and other grow equipment as well as a Mitsubishi Outlander.

She must provide a blood sample for a national DNA databank police use to solve crime and she must pay a $200 fine that goes into a fund to help victims of crime.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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A young woman accusing former Windsor Spitfire Ben Johnson of bruising her during forced sex in the washroom of a bar may have had those injuries before the incident, Superior Court heard Wednesday.

During a pre-trial hearing, Johnson’s lawyer alleged the young woman posted a beach photo of herself on social media taken soon before the alleged attack. Defence lawyer Patrick Ducharme said that photo showed the young woman with bruises on her chest.

Police, who copied all the data on the woman’s cellphone, including deleted images and texts, are now tasked with trying to find that photo. Ducharme alleges the woman reached out to a friend about how to delete the posted photo after the alleged attack.

Johnson, 21, is charged with sexual assault for an alleged incident at Mynt, a now defunct downtown nightclub, on March 18, 2013. In a separate proceeding, Johnson is also on trial in Ontario court for sexually assaulting another young woman in the washroom of another bar a few weeks earlier.

Ducharme alleges evidence that could be useful in Johnson’s defence has been lost or destroyed. The beach photo could be one piece of that lost evidence. Lost evidence is one of several arguments Ducharme is putting to the court in the hope of getting the charges against Johnson stayed before the trial even begins. Ducharme has already lost applications to have the trial judge removed from the case and to have a mistrial declared.

Court heard testimony Wednesday from a Windsor police officer responsible for extracting data from the alleged victim’s cellphone and compiling an archive of her Facebook account. Const. Jeff Taylor testified he retrieved all text messages sent and received between March 15 and March 26, 2013.

In one series of text messages, court heard, the alleged victim is conversing with a friend. In the messages, the young women talk about “getting rid” of something posted to a social media account. Another message asks the question, “Do the tweets still show?”

Taylor testified that while he filed a “preservation order” with Facebook to preserve the contents of the woman’s account, he did not do the same for Twitter or Instagram.

Taylor said he discovered Ben Johnson was one of the alleged victim’s “contacts,” and that his information was either stored in her phone or they had communicated in the past.

Taylor said he will need several days to go though the “backup” he made of the young woman’s phone. The defence application for lost evidence will be adjourned until Taylor’s investigation is complete.

In the meantime, the court will proceed with another defence application that will be heard behind closed doors. The hearing will have an impact on the alleged victim’s privacy, so the public will be excluded from the courtroom and the young woman will have a court-appointed lawyer representing her.

A publication ban prohibits the media from identifying the young woman.

The trial will not begin hearing evidence on the sexual assault charge until next year. Ducharme told the court Wednesday he is booked with other cases until June.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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The young host of a house party who sexually assaulted an intoxicated female guest was sentenced Thursday to two years less a day in jail.

Juan Robert Griffith, 23, had sex with a young woman who had passed out in his parents’ Tecumseh home in August 2013. The assault took place in the guest bedroom where the young woman, who had been vomiting, was trying to recuperate from a night of drinking.

Court heard Griffith and the young woman were friends. Griffith showed a romantic interest in her, but she was dating someone else. Her boyfriend had been at the party, as well, but left before the assault.

Superior Court Justice George King convicted Griffith in May after a five-day trial.

Griffith is appealing his conviction and has applied for bail pending appeal.

Assistant Crown attorney Jennifer Holmes had asked King to sentence Griffith to three years in jail. King said, given that Griffith has no prior criminal record, he had to give the young man the most lenient sentence possible under the circumstances.

After he is released from jail, Griffith will be on probation for 24 months. During that time, he must abstain from alcohol.

He can’t possess any weapons for 10 years and he must provide a blood sample for the national DNA databank police use to solve crime.

Griffith will be on the national sex offender registry, allowing police to track his whereabouts for the next 20 years.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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A cocaine dealer got a reduced sentence from a Windsor judge Thursday for trying to help local police uncover corruption within their ranks.

The fact police buried the information Sabrina La Commare supplied doesn’t mean the former Lakeshore woman shouldn’t get credit for trying, said Superior Court Justice Renee Pomerance.

Pomerance sentenced La Commare to 18 months on house arrest. The Crown had sought real jail.

La Commare, 49, was arrested June 6, 2011 with 14 grams of cocaine in her purse divided into 10 baggies ready for sale. She was carrying a wad of cash — $1,045 Cdn and $190 US — and in her car, she had a marijuana grinder and a debt list.

La Commare claimed she got the drugs from her husband’s stash at home. Police found cocaine and cash throughout the kitchen of the Chelsea Parkway home. Behind a panel above the fridge were four packets each containing 28 grams of cocaine. In a drawer, there were two more bags — one containing 17 grams and another labelled “Doug” containing 1.8 grams.

Police found $3,000 in a pink purse in a kitchen drawer and another $120 US in a billfold on the counter. In the pantry was another $3,640 in US and Canadian currency, $2,000 of which was bundled with a rubber band and labelled “June 3” in handwriting La Commare admitted was hers.

La Commare claimed all the money and drugs belonged to her husband, Mark Anthony Trudel. She said Trudel was a drug dealer, but also an abusive addict who once slammed her face on the kitchen counter, choked her and broke her finger. When she was bedridden with cancer, he left her without food or water.

At the time of La Commare’s arrest, Trudel was out of the city for a month, meeting with his drug supplier in Calgary. La Commare said she seized the opportunity to sell some of Trudel’s cocaine so she could make enough money to flee the abusive relationship.

“I accept certain aspects of Ms. La Commare’s testimony,” the judge said. But, Pomerance added, other elements are “more difficult to accept.”

If La Commare needed money, why didn’t she just take some from the kitchen, the judge asked. “Her evidence on this point does not seem logical.”

The prosecution said none of what La Commare said was corroborated, so it shouldn’t be believed. The judge wondered, then, why the prosecutor in the case did not call Trudel to dispute his ex-wife’s testimony.

Trudel was at first charged along with his wife, but the case against him was withdrawn. He appeared in court on the first day of trial, never to return.

Trudel agreed to the forfeiture of the money found in the kitchen. In doing so, the Crown was admitting the money was his, Pomerance said. If that’s the case, the drugs were likely his too, the judge surmised.

Pomerance therefore sentenced La Commare for only the drugs found in her purse.

La Commare asked for leniency since she had offered to become a police informant. Windsor police had investigated instances of harassment and mischief by her husband — he vandalized her hair salon — during which she told them she feared Trudel because he had drug associates who were also police officers.

Her lawyer had her swear an affidavit in which she named three police officers — one from the OPP, another who had retired from the Windsor police drug squad and another Windsor officer who had committed suicide.

Windsor police called in the RCMP to interview La Commare. She spoke to one officer — Sgt. Steven Richardson — for three hours. Richardson said he knew one of the officers she named personally, so he didn’t believe anything she said.

Richardson never brought the allegations to Windsor police and Windsor police never asked Richardson about the interview.

“It is not entirely clear why there was no followup by police,” the judge said.

“I am in no position to determine if these allegations were true.” But the judge added, they “should have been subject to further investigation and inquiry.”

Pomerance said it is clear La Commare tried to co-operate with police to “purchase leniency.”

But even if motivated by “rank self-interest,” she is entitled to leniency.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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Rafid Jihad tried to kill a neighbourhood boy by whaling on his head with a hammer. Now Jihad wants to just go home.

Jihad, 29, was sentenced Friday to 5½ years in prison for the unprovoked attack on the 13-year-old who was merely walking on the sidewalk past Jihad’s Church Street home on June 6, 2013. Jihad has already spent enough time in jail that the remainder of his sentence is 42 months, or 3½ years.

But in the muddled state of mental illness where Jihad resides, he told the judge he should be able to walk out of Superior Court Friday a free man to return to his homeland of Iraq.

At past appearances, court has heard much about Jihad’s mental state. While at the South West Detention Centre, Jihad believed people were sneaking into his cell at night and raping him. He would spread newspapers across the floor, thinking if any pages were out of place, his suspicions would be confirmed. Jihad demanded DNA testing on his food because he was convinced he was being drugged.

The court wanted Jihad assessed to see if he might be deemed not criminally responsible for his crime. Jihad refused to be assessed and has refused counselling, opting instead for a penitentiary term.

“He doesn’t recognize the mental health issues he has,” said his lawyer, Frank Retar.

If Jihad remains “non-compliant” with counselling orders, he will not earn early release, Retar said.

At Jihad’s last court appearance, Superior Court Justice Scott Campbell told Jihad he would be asking him if he had anything to say before sentencing. Jihad arrived in court Friday with 40 handwritten pages, all in Arabic. The rambling document was filled with “unrelated comments,” Retar told the judge. After a brief court recess, Jihad said he was content to say nothing.

Since Jihad is not a Canadian citizen, he will likely be deported once his sentence is complete, court heard. Jihad, who moved here with his family in 2002, said he is looking forward to returning to Iraq, even though he lived in the country during years of civil unrest, and, as a child, witnessed people being blown up in explosions.

Campbell said he took Jihad’s “traumatic life experiences” into account in sentencing. The judge called deportation a “collateral consequence” he also weighed in determining an appropriate punishment.

Jihad’s victim suffered a fractured skull but has no lasting physical effects from the attack. The boy fell to the ground after the first blow, and Jihad continued to rain the hammer down on his head. Jihad suddenly stopped and walked away.

Campbell noted Jihad expressed regret for the offence and empathy for his victim, but offered “little insight” into why he committed the offence. It was neither planned, nor premeditated, the judge said.

The boy’s mother arrived at the courthouse minutes after the sentencing. She said she slept in after working late the night before. “I was supposed to be here and I missed it,” she said, declining further comment.

Assistant Crown attorney Brian Manarin called the sentence fair.

“There’s obvious mitigating factors,” he said, citing Jihad’s mental state. “There’s obvious aggravating factors that include a young person being violently struck with a hammer on a street in broad daylight which is very shocking behaviour.”

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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Waterboarding. Beatings. Being forced to turn tricks.

A 22-year-old woman testified Tuesday against a man she said controlled her through torture and psychological abuse. He controlled her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s little brother, too, she said, forcing them to participate in repeated abuse against her.

Liam Jace McMillan, 24, is on trial in Windsor, charged with kidnapping, assault, assault causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon, sexual assault, uttering death threats and breaching bail conditions. The charges stem from incidents said to have occurred in April and May 2014.

The woman, whose identity is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, said she was living in Windsor in 2014 with her boyfriend and McMillan. McMillan controlled her and another escort, the woman said. Money the two women earned was handed to McMillan who was saving up for a down payment on a house they all could share.

Superior Court heard the women toured southern Ontario, meeting clients in hotel rooms in Niagara Falls, Hamilton and London, culminating on May 4, 2014 in a night fuelled with alcohol and cocaine.

McMillan and the woman’s boyfriend had lived together in Alberta as children, court heard. They reconnected over the years, both moving to Windsor.

At the hotel in London, McMillan ordered the woman’s boyfriend to beat her in a gang-style ritual known as “a minute.”

The boyfriend got his teenaged brother to do it instead, she said. The boyfriend timed the assault, mercifully cutting it short of 60 seconds, she testified.

With both eyes black, her face and ears swollen, she went to sleep.

Later McMillan dragged her out of bed, pushed her into a bathtub and turned on the cold shower. He clamped a wet washcloth over her mouth while pouring cup after cup of water over it.

Her own boyfriend pinned her down.

“It was to the point where I couldn’t breathe… I was gagging.”

She said she was sure she would die.

When McMillan left the room, her boyfriend wrapped her shivering body in a towel and helped her into dry clothes.

When the group returned to Windsor a day later, her boyfriend’s mother saw her injuries, then later, took her to police.

She told police about what transpired at the London hotel room. Months later, she told police about an incident she said occurred in April 2014 in which McMillan bound her hands and feet with duct tape and threw her in the trunk of a car.

The car drove around accelerating and braking abruptly, throwing the woman about the trunk and leaving her bruised, she said. On a dirt road, she was removed from the trunk and laid on the ground. McMillan held a knife over her face and thrust it into the ground next to her head.

Again, her boyfriend and his younger brother were there.

A sweater was taped around her head and the men put her back in the trunk. When the car stopped, she was forced down a flight of stairs. McMillan told her he had made arrangements to sell her to the Triads, an Asian gang with branches in Canada. 

Then, she heard the sound of metal clanking. McMillan told her he was going to remove her toenails.

McMillan did her no further harm.

Her boyfriend removed the sweater and the duct tape. When the pair went upstairs, McMillan offered her a drink.

The woman said she didn’t tell police until much later when she learned McMillan had given her boyfriend’s little brother the butcher’s knife and urged him to kill her.

Neither her boyfriend, nor his brother who was 15 at the time, were ever charged with any crime, court heard.

McMillan came to court Tuesday with his mother who has promised to supervise him while he is free on bail. He sported a fresh haircut and smart, dark suit.

“It’s not possible that this clean-cut young man is the monster that you claim he is,” defence lawyer Ken Marley said in his cross-examination of the woman. “Liam McMillan never did any of these things to you. It’s a complete fiction.”

The woman insisted McMillan is not as he appears.

“You haven’t seen the death in his eyes. You haven’t seen how scary he is… It was like living under Hitler.”

McMillan has been previously convicted of assaulting the woman and her boyfriend in a February 2014 incident, and of attempting to obstruct justice by trying to get them to recant police statements they swore against him.

ssacheli@windsorstar.com

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Liam Jace McMillan lived the gang life long after leaving his crew.

So says a 22-year-old man who testified Wednesday to helping McMillan assault and terrorize a woman in 2014 – a woman who supported them both by turning tricks.

McMillan, 24, is on trial in Windsor’s Superior Court, charged with kidnapping, assault, assault causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon, sexual assault, uttering death threats and breaching bail conditions. The charges stem from incidents alleged to have occurred in April and May 2014.

McMillan’s alleged victim is the girlfriend of the man who testified against him Wednesday. Neither the alleged victim nor her boyfriend is being named due to a court order that prevents the publication of information that would identify the woman.

The man testified McMillan drew him into a gang when they both lived in Alberta. They eventually left, the man said, but McMillan maintained the lifestyle, continuing a reign of terror and abuse to keep the man and his girlfriend servile.

McMillan and the man had grown up “like brothers,” living in the same household for part of their childhoods.

The man said he participated in assaults on his own girlfriend because he felt he had no other choice. That too was ingrained in him from his days with McMillan in the gang. If you stood in the way of someone getting a beating, “whatever that person was going to get, you’re going to get two times worse.”

McMillan believed the man’s girlfriend was “disrespectful and didn’t know how to listen.” So, after picking her up from a call with a john in April 2014, they drove around the city until dark, then took away her cellphone, then stopped the car on a gravel road and dragged her out.

“I’m not very proud to say this, but I helped tape her feet and hands.” McMillan and the man put the woman in the trunk of the car, then McMillan got back behind the wheel. He drove for miles speeding up and stopping abruptly, backing up and turning around to toss the bound woman around in the trunk. When they heard her screaming as they drove, McMillan stopped the car again and made the man tape a sweater over her head to muffle her voice.

The man helped get the woman out of the trunk and carry her to the basement of the house where they all lived. He then left her alone with McMillan, still bound, while he went upstairs to drink.

The woman testified earlier this week that McMillan terrorized her, telling her he was going to pull out her toenails and that he had already made arrangements to sell her to an Asian gang.

Earlier Wednesday, the boyfriend’s younger brother testified to witnessing McMillan waterboard the woman in a London hotel room in May 2014. Earlier that night, the brother, 15 at the time, was “forced” by McMillan to administer a timed beating on the woman. The teen said he slapped the woman in the face and head for a minute. He later noticed she was bleeding from her ears.

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Two brothers who were caught with cocaine were sentenced to jail time Thursday morning.

Superior Court Justice Kirk Munroe sentenced Bela John Semenski to two years in custody. Semenski was found with more than 200 grams of cocaine during an April 2013 police raid at a storage locker he rented, said lawyer Paul Esco, who was defending Semenski’s brother Steven. Bela John Semenski was defended by lawyer Laura Joy.

Steven Semenski received 60 days in jail, with no probation. Esco said Steven Semenski was found with just under 20 grams of cocaine as he was leaving his brother’s house in April 2013.

Both brothers pleaded guilty to the charge of possession for the purpose of trafficking, Esco said.

Esco said Steven Semenski wasn’t involved in selling the drugs, but was sentenced to jail after police found him with cocaine that he was trying to hide to protect his family members.

“Without any forethought or planning, he reacted to help his brother out. Unfortunately, the very momentary lapse in judgment cost him dearly,” Esco said, adding family members were in court to support the two.

Esco said the charge laid against Athanasia Semenski, Bela John Semenski’s wife, was withdrawn.

ctthompson@windsorstar.com

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A disgraced doctor who was acquitted of mischief last year is suing the province and the Ontario Provincial Police officer who investigated him.

Charles Nicholas Rathe, 52, is claiming damages of $4.5 million. In a statement of claim filed in Windsor’s Superior Court, the former Belle River doctor says he is the victim of negligent investigation and malicious prosecution that cost him his medical licence and his health.

No statements of defence have been filed. Rathe’s claims have not been tested in court.

Rathe was acquitted of filing a bogus complaint with police. Rathe told them a patient he had hired to work in his now-defunct medical practice had stolen his ID and forged his name on a car lease. Police believed Rathe had had an affair with the woman and indeed signed the lease, so they charged him instead.

Rathe, who has battled drug addiction, was convicted of assault in 2007 for punching a woman in the face during a road rage incident.

He was stripped of his medical licence in 2012.

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The judge apologized, saying there was no sentence he could impose that would satisfy the family of a cyclist driven down by a motorist who then sped off, leaving him to die alone in the street.

Jarrod Rusnak was sentenced Thursday to nine months in jail after pleading guilty to hit-and-run in the death last June 18 of Kevin Emisch, 38, of LaSalle.

Standing in an Ontario Court docket ahead of sentencing, Rusnak, who was also 38 at the time of the collision, said he “regretted” what happened. He was charged five days after the collision.

Speaking next, Justice Lloyd Dean told family and friends sitting in the courtroom: “Nothing that can be said by the accused can in any way … help you to overcome your grief.”

The judge handed Rusnak an eight-month term for the failure-to-remain-at-the-scene conviction and a consecutive one-month sentence for a breach of the terms of probation for his time out on bail. With time-and-a-half credit given for 106 days served in pre-sentence custody, Rusnak was told he had another 111 days to serve.

“It’s disappointing but not surprising,” Lori Newton, chairwoman of Bike Friendly Windsor-Essex, said on learning of the verdict. “We’ve seen this before, in Toronto — the courts have got to look at this differently,” she added.

The local cycling community last summer held a memorial ride and planted two “ghost” bikes at the locations where two cyclists were killed by motorists in the space of days. Steven Lamos, 59, was taken off life support June 21 after being struck at Parent Avenue and Tecumseh Road East four days earlier.

Cyclists follow a hearse down Wyandotte Street east during the Ride of Silence, an annual memorial dedicated to those who have been injured or killed while riding their bicycles.

Rusnak’s guilty plea came the day after another Windsor man, Matthew Pilon, surrendered to police and was charged with failure to stop at the scene of an accident after a senior was struck by a vehicle Monday while walking across Tecumseh Road East at Kildare Road.

“It’s reprehensible for anyone to hit another human being on the road and then leave the scene,” said Newton.

Rusnak will be on probation for 18 months after he’s finished his jail sentence and must attend counselling. He’s prohibited from consuming alcohol or “other intoxicants,” cannot possess weapons and is forbidden from driving for 15 months. He must also submit a blood sample for the police DNA databank.

“I’m not going to comment on whether the sentence is appropriate — it’s in the range,” assistant Crown attorney George Spartinos told reporters after the sentencing hearing. The court heard that the prosecution only had circumstantial evidence, including paint chips of Emisch’s bike on his SUV, linking Rusnak to the fatal collision.

Family members of the victim, including Emisch’s mother, declined to comment after the sentencing.

“It’s really sad — it was a really unfortunate set of events,” defence lawyer Robert DiPietro told the Star. “He’ll have to live with this the rest of his life,” he said of his client.

Emisch, whose nickname was Bushman, had run-ins with the law, but he was known as a good-hearted man who enjoyed working with his hands and helping others. At the time of his death, friends described his aptitude for the outdoors and his cooking skills.

“As a result of his actions, someone died, and he has to take the consequences,” the judge said of Rusnak.

Dean said he had to take into consideration Rusnak’s guilty plea and his lack of a criminal record as mitigating factors. He told the family he himself had lost a brother at an early age and understood a bit of what they were going through.

“You never get over it, it just gets easier,” said Dean.

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A man accused of setting a house fire that left a seven-year-old girl clinging to life will remain behind bars pending trial.

Kenneth Kormendy, 43, appeared in Windsor’s Superior Court Thursday to make another bid for release. A justice of the peace in November denied him bail, so Kormendy applied to the higher court to appeal the decision.

Superior Court Justice Kirk Munroe dismissed Kormendy’s application Thursday and ordered the man to remain detained. Munroe’s reasons and what was heard at the earlier bail hearing are subject to a publication ban.

Outside court at the time of Kormendy’s bail hearing, assistant Crown attorney Walter Costa told the Star the prosecution alleged the man posed a threat to public safety and that releasing him would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

Kormendy is accused of a torching a house on Balfour Boulevard Oct. 24 knowing Sherri Rueda, 36, and her two young children were inside. Rueda suffered burns to both hands. Her daughter, Isabel, 7, was severely burned and was hospitalized for weeks after the blaze. Rueda’s 11-month-old baby Felicia, was also home at the time, but was uninjured.

Isabel, whose survival was uncertain immediately after the fire, is now out of the hospital and recovering.

Kormendy is charged with three counts of attempted murder and five arson-related charges.

“These are very serious charges,” said defence lawyer Evan Weber. A preliminary hearing is the next likely step in the case, he said.

Kormendy will appear in Ontario court via video link from the jail Friday. His case is expected to be remanded to a scheduling court next week where a preliminary hearing date will be set. Because Kormendy is in custody, the court will expedite his case, Weber said. He estimated the preliminary hearing will be two to four months away.

Weber said he will discuss with Kormendy the possibility of waiving his right to a preliminary hearing and proceeding straight to trial in Superior Court.

Weber identified four people who came to court Thursday as Kormendy’s mother, step-father, brother and sister-in-law. Weber said they had come to court to vouch for Kormendy, promising to supervise him if he were granted bail. They were also prepared to promise money to the court in what the court refers to as “sureties.”

Weber said they came to court “knowing it was unlikely” Kormendy would be released, but were disappointed nonetheless.

Three members of Rueda’s family were in court to hear the judge’s ruling.

They declined comment, at earlier court appearances explaining they’ve been advised by police not to speak to media.

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A LaSalle man who collected images of men having sex with infants was sentenced Thursday to 19 months in jail.

John Trajcevski, 43, had 1,300 videos and 14,000 photos of what court heard described as the worst kind of child pornography there is. He pleaded guilty, but tried to diminish his responsibility by saying the images migrated onto his laptop as an unavoidable consequence of his work as a computer repairman.

Superior Court Justice Gregory Verbeem didn’t buy Trajcevski’s rationale, calling the images “filth.”

Trajcevski was arrested in 2013 at his LaSalle home. He maintained his innocence until September 2015 when he pleaded guilty on what was to be his first day of trial. He pleaded guilty to a single count of possession of child pornography.

Following his jail sentence, Trajcevski will be on probation for three years. During his probation, he can’t resume his career in computer repairs, nor can he use any computer capable of accessing the Internet. He can’t associate or communicate with anyone under the age of 16 and he must take counselling for what the judge called “sexually offending behaviour” and “acceptance of responsibility issues.”

For the next 10 years, he can’t be in any position of trust involving children or use a computer to communicate with anyone under the age of 16.

Trajcevski has been placed on the national sex offender registry, meaning he will have to keep police up to date on details like his address, employment and the cars he drives for the next 20 years. He will also have to provide a blood sample for the national DNA database police use to solve crime.

He will also have to pay a $100 fine that goes into a fund to help victims of crime.

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Longtime Riverside hockey and baseball coach Robert Shaw says he may have once hounded a player to expose his genitals to him, but denies ever sleeping nude with him or repeatedly forcing anal intercourse on a second teenager years later.

Shaw, 59, testified Tuesday in his own defence at his sex abuse trial in Superior Court. Shaw is charged with four counts of sexual assault and four counts of sexual exploitation involving a former player in 1989, and two counts of gross indecency involving another teenaged boy in the late 1970s.

Shaw’s accusers, now grown men, say they were under the age of 16 when Shaw abused them. One man recalled accompanying Shaw on a trip to Buffalo, N.Y. to pick up furniture. He said the pair spent the night in a Niagara Falls hotel where Shaw wrestled the teen onto the bed and forced anal intercourse on him. It was one of three times Shaw raped him, the man said.

In court Tuesday, Shaw said he took his accuser to Buffalo, but that the trip occurred in 1993, not 1989. His accuser would have been 18 at the time.

If Shaw’s dates are correct, he can’t be convicted of sexual exploitation.

As for the sexual assault Shaw is accused of committing on the trip, it didn’t happen, Shaw said.

A second accuser says, at Shaw’s insistence, he and Shaw stripped naked in front of each other before sharing a bed for the night. The accuser says he was seeking refuge at Shaw’s Wyandotte Street apartment after his parents got into an alcohol-fueled argument at home. The accuser says the incident occurred in the late 1970s.

Shaw brought to court a medical document with his address on it that suggested he didn’t live at the apartment until years later. Shaw said he remembered the former player showing up on his doorstep distraught, but said the teen was 18 at the time.

As for sleeping naked beside him, Shaw said, because it was November or December, he would not have slept in the nude, but rather in sweatpants and a t-shirt.

While Shaw’s lawyer, Andrew Bradie, presented documents in court to support Shaw’s version of events, one document did the opposite.

As Shaw was testifying about a Monte Carlo he once owned, the police officer in charge of the case slipped out of court and looked up the vehicle’s registration records. Shaw testified he sold the vehicle to his father, then bought it back from him.

The registration showed Shaw’s father sold the car to someone else.

“You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?” assistant Crown attorney Craig Houle said in his cross-examination of Shaw.

Houle suggested Shaw brought documents that would support his timeline, but didn’t call as witnesses his own siblings who would have had knowledge about the vehicle, the trip to pick up furniture or where Shaw lived and when.

“Why wouldn’t you have asked them?” Houle said. When Shaw was at a loss to explain, Houle said, “I’m going to suggest to you, sire, you didn’t want their answers.”

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When Dennis Lee sold air purifiers door-to-door in Windsor and Essex County, the company that supplied him with the units was inundated with complaints from unhappy customers, the salesman’s fraud and theft trial heard Monday.

“It was becoming a little bit of a nightmare,” said D’Arcy Dell, vice-president of The Distribution Centre’s Respiraide division. “I tried to get a hold of Dennis, but it was hard. He was like a ghost.”

Lee, 37, who started a Windsor company called MedAir, is on trial, charged with 21 counts of fraud and theft charges. He is accused of defrauding mostly elderly customers from 2005 to 2012.

Lee started his trial Monday charged with 29 counts. Those charges were whittled down before the first witness even testified because eight alleged victims have either died or are too ill to testify.

Court heard Lee was at first a salesman with a local company called Healthy Homes. He was promoted to sales manager and was in charge of hiring commission staff and training them.

Before Healthy Homes went under, Lee had started his own business. Without permission, Lee used Respiraide’s Woodbridge, Ont. address on incorporation paperwork he filed with the government, court heard.

Lee would sell air purifiers or service agreements for them. When customers couldn’t reach Lee, they’d call Respiraide’s head office. Dell said he fielded those calls.

Dell said he would try to reach Lee on the phone. He would drive to Windsor to meet him. “Everytime I would go there, the sales manager would lie for him… It was very frustrating.”

Finally, Dell said, The Distribution Centre cut ties with Lee, no longer supplying him with units to sell. “We just refused to sell him products. We were done.”

But under cross-examination by defence lawyer Shannon Pollock, Dell admitted his own father sold units to Lee. Dell’s father, now deceased, used to sell air purifiers, too.

John Moore testified he was Lee’s boss at Healthy Homes. When the company folded, he sold his customer list to a company in London, even though Lee was, at the time, Respiraide’s distributor in Windsor. Lee had even taken over the lease on Healthy Homes’s office space.

Moore and Dell continued to have a business relationship after Healthy Homes closed shop. Dell owned a distributorship business in London and hired Moore to work there, court heard.

Lee’s trial Monday also heard from a disgruntled customer. Maria Sopha testified she bought an air purifier from Lee, then took it with her when she moved into a retirement home. Lee stopped in on her one day to check it, bringing her a teddy bear and a toy for her cat. She said Lee later asked to borrow money from her and drove her to the Bank of Montreal branch at Devonshire Mall. She couldn’t identify a bank draft presented to her in court, nor did dates on cheques she signed made out to Lee’s company jibe with her memory.

Assistant Crown attorney Scott Pratt invited Superior Court Justice Gregory Verbeem to acquit Lee of the charge related to the woman’s complaint.

Lee’s trial, based on complaints by 13 other alleged victims, is expected to continue for two weeks.

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The fraud allegations against door-to-door salesman Dennis Lee continued to deteriorate Thursday, with the prosecutor conceding there is not enough evidence to convict the man on most of the charges he faces.

Assistant Crown attorney Scott Pratt did not call evidence on eight of the 29 charges. He acknowledged that on all but four charges, the alleged victims were unable to testify that Lee did anything criminal.

Pratt intends to proceed on four charges relating to two alleged victims from Essex and LaSalle.

Lee, 37, is accused of defrauding mostly elderly customers from 2005 to 2012 through the door-to-door sales of air purifiers throughout Windsor and Essex County. Lee worked for a now-defunct company called Healthy Homes before starting his own business called MedAir.

According to sales contracts made exhibits at his trial, Lee also was associated with a company called Enviro Friendly Technologies.

At the onset of the trial this week, Pratt said he would not be calling any evidence related to some charges because the alleged victims have either died or are too ill to testify.

Lee’s trial Thursday heard from a final Crown witness. A Kingsville woman testified Lee came to her home to clean an air purifier she had purchased through another salesperson. Later, Lee sold her a second unit for $1,500 and she signed an $880 contract for him to service both machines.

When the unit he sold her broke down, she tried to call Lee. His phone was not in service.

It’s possible Lee had already been arrested and on bail conditions to cease business when the woman called, the prosecutor conceded.

Lee’s lawyer, Shannon Pollock, has not said whether Lee intends to testify in his own defence.

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A drug dealer who kept a stash of coke in a dummy Pepsi can was sentenced Friday to two years less a day in jail.

Adam Nabil El Medany, 23, was arrested in April 2013 after police got a tip about him dealing drugs. When police raided his Partington Avenue home, they found 64.3 grams of cocaine, as well as pot and crystal meth in quantities that suggested he was trafficking in the drugs. Most of the cocaine was found in a safe while the rest was in the hollowed-out Pepsi can.

In a guilty plea entered on the day his trial was to start in Superior Court last fall, El Medany pleaded guilty to a single count of possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

Court heard that El Medany comes from a good family that immigrated to Canada from Saudi Arabia. His father is an engineer working overseas.

El Medany came to Windsor to study engineering at the university. He later enrolled at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., before dropping out and moving to Calgary to become a truck driver. While in Thunder Bay, El Medany assaulted a woman.

El Medany’s lawyer, Laura Joy, spoke of the shame El Medany has brought on his family.

Justice Christopher Bondy sentenced El Medany to the maximum provincial reformatory sentence followed by a year of probation. The Crown will keep the $3,315 in Canadian currency and $210 US found hidden with the drugs in his home, as well as the safe, two cell phones and digital scales that were tools of his trade.

El Medany must pay a $100 fine that goes into a fund to help victims of crime. He is prohibited from possessing any firearm for 10 years and he must provide a sample of his blood for the national DNA databank police use to solve crime.

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A trucker with the slogan, “Don’t test your luck,” adorning his trailer took his own advice Tuesday when he pre-empted his drug smuggling trial by pleading guilty.

Wayne Douglas Rutherford, 63, of Colborne, Ont., a small community near Belleville, was caught Aug. 4, 2013, trying to smuggle more than $6 million worth of cocaine and methamphetamine into Canada over the Ambassador Bridge. Rutherford had bricks of the drugs hidden behind a false panel in the nose of his trailer.

Rutherford Tuesday pleaded guilty to importing nearly 47 kilograms of cocaine, importing 17 kilograms of methamphetamine, possessing the cocaine for the purpose of trafficking and possessing the methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking.

Rutherford is facing drug conspiracy charges in Quebec and says he intends to plead guilty there as well.

Superior Court in Windsor has yet to consider sentence, but a trucker last year was sent to the federal penitentiary for 16 years for a similar crime here.

Court heard Rutherford had driven to California with long-time friend Warren William Jeffrey, of St. Catharines, Ont. They were carrying a load of PVC pipes manufactured in Ontario. Court heard the drugs were loaded onto the truck in Sacramento after the pipes were delivered. The pair picked up a load of Montreal-bound tomatoes on Aug. 2 and headed to the border.

Rutherford dropped Jeffrey off in Michigan as he headed to the Ambassador Bridge.

Border officers x-rayed the truck and spotted an anomaly. They off-loaded the skids of tomatoes and found the suspicious panel. The caulking was broken around the panel and it had shiny screws unlike any others on the truck.

Officers removed the panel and found the drugs hidden in a secret cavity.

Last week, with his five-week trial to begin Monday, Rutherford signed an affidavit admitting to being a drug trafficker. He said Jeffrey was unaware of the drugs. “I was very careful to ensure that he at no time would become aware… as I was well aware that he would have absolutely no part in this,” Rutherford said in the written statement to the court.

Rutherford, who remains free on bail, returns to court in June. Rutherford’s Toronto lawyer, Joseph Caprara, said he and federal prosecutor Richard Pollock do not agree on what sentence Rutherford should receive.

Justice Christopher Bondy will sentence Rutherford at a date yet to be set. Charges against Rutherford’s driving partner are expected to be withdrawn.

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A Windsor man charged with attempted murder in connection to a downtown stabbing last summer will not have to stand trial.

Preston Scott, 32, was arrested June 18, 2015, four days after a 31-year-old man was stabbed repeatedly in the back and chest as he walked down Wyandotte Street West. Police say the victim knew his attacker, but refused to co-operate with investigators.

A preliminary hearing was held in the case. An Ontario court judge ruled there is not enough evidence to proceed to trial.

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The senior citizen with a bum kidney who limped into a Windsor courtroom Thursday seems the unlikely kingpin of a human smuggling operation.

But appearances deceive where Bardhyl Cenolli are concerned.

Cenolli, 62, was sentenced Thursday to 20 months on house arrest followed by a year on probation for conspiring to violate U.S. immigration law. During Cenolli’s trial last year, court heard he recruited a stranger named John Phillip Jordan, a Windsor man with a 19-foot Bayliner, to ferry illegal aliens across the Detroit River. For two years until he was caught, Cenolli arranged 15 such trips, delivering the human cargo to the shores of Little River to be smuggled into Michigan.

Cenolli, who lives in Toronto but drove a 2003 Cadillac De Ville with Quebec plates, paid Jordan $2,000 US, then later, $2,500 US per trip.

Superior Court Justice Gregory Verbeem convicted Cenolli of a single count of conspiracy related to an Albanian man Cenolli had Jordan smuggle into the U.S. on Sept. 19, 2012. U.S. Border Patrol agents, working with the RCMP, were watching that day using heat-signature detecting cameras mounted high above camouflaged truck on Belle Isle. They watched Jordan motor from the Little River marina to the shores of a derelict property called Alter Park, known for shootings, drug activity and prostitution.

Cenolli’s trial heard U.S. agents followed Jordan back into Canadian waters and arrested him. After 20 days in a Michigan jail, Jordan cut a deal where he’d be prosecuted in Canada and would testify against Cenolli. He pleaded guilty to immigration conspiracy and was sentenced to one year on house arrest.

Court heard Cenolli is a former Albanian intelligence officer run out of his homeland for sharing secrets with other countries. He and his family fled to Serbia before immigrating to Canada in 1992. He worked here in forestry for just three months before going on social assistance. He had a kidney transplant 19 years ago and has been collecting a government disability pension since.

Cenolli, who holds an economics degree from an Albanian university, was convicted in 1998 of Immigration Act charges. Then, in 2002, he was convicted of theft and handed a suspended sentence with probation. He breached three times, getting one day in jail, and later, a $300 fine.

The crime for which Cenolli was sentenced Thursday carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. For a second offence, the maximum penalty is 14 years and $1 million.

Verbeem said he had no information before him suggesting Cenolli’s first conviction was for a human smuggling offence.

In 2012, Parliament amended the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, imposing a three-year minimum sentence for people convicted of human smuggling.

“It underscores the seriousness with which Parliament views this conduct,” Verbeem said. But, the judge noted, Cenolli committed his crime before the new sentencing minimums took effect.

Verbeem said crimes like Cenolli’s harm Canada-U.S. relations. While there is no evidence that the Albanian man Cenolli arranged to smuggle into the United States was after anything other than a better way of life, human smuggling compromises the “integrity of the border” and exposes the United States to terrorism threats, Verbeem said.

Federal prosecutor Ed Posliff asked that Cenolli be sentenced to real jail. Verbeem, citing Cenolli’s age and health problems, instead agreed to the house arrest request of defence lawyer Maria Carroccia.

The man’s transplanted kidney appears to be failing, and he sees a specialist monthly, Carroccia said.

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The ghost of Noelle Paquette, the Sarnia kindergarten teacher abducted, raped and murdered in 2013 by a sadistic couple who found each other on the Internet, hung over a Windsor courtroom Friday.

Assistant Crown attorney Walter Costa referenced the case as he spoke at the guilty plea and sentencing of Peter Bandulj, a Windsor man who hatched a plan to kidnap two sisters he knew, sexually assault and kill them, then dump their bodies in a wooded area. Bandulj had turned to an online forum to recruit someone to help him carry out the plan. Luckily, said Costa, the partner Bandulj attracted was an undercover police officer, not a like-minded individual.

“Had it not been a law enforcement officer… we would have a significant tragedy in our community right now.”

Bandulj, 28, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of counselling murder, two counts of counselling aggravated sexual assault and one count of attempted break and enter in relation to the plot to abduct the sisters, aged 20 and 17. Bandulj also pleaded guilty to a charge of accessing child pornography for the 180 images of prepubescent children found on his computer after his August 2015 arrest.

He was sentenced to four years, but with credit for time spent in jail to date, his sentence is another three years and 62 days.

Peter Bandulj is pictured in this Facebook photo.

Court heard a special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was scrolling through an online forum in July of last year when he came across the title, “Scream Bitch.” Bandulj, who went by the screen name “thesilentone,” created a post under it entitled “Sister Fun.”

Bandulj’s July 20, 2015 post read as follows: “Would anyone be interested in a pair of sisters to do whatever they please with? I am offering my help and all information I know about them. Experiment, use, abuse, whatever comes to mind.”

Included in the post was a photo of the intended victims.

The U.S. agent responded to Bandulj’s post. He and Bandulj exchanged messages and the Windsor man detailed his plan, offering the sisters’ address.

The agent determined Bandulj’s location and contacted Windsor police. Undercover police officers in the city took over communicating with Bandulj, culminating in a “dry run” to practise breaking into the young women’s house.

A Windsor officer, posing as the man who had answered Bandulj’s post, met with Bandulj and accompanied him to a Walmart where they purchased tape and other items they’d need for the abduction.

Bandulj told the undercover officer they would break into the home that night and install equipment that would allow him to spy on the two young women.

Bandulj suggested that when the day of the real abduction came – the following Saturday – they would have to rent a U-Haul truck to take the sisters to a wooded area where they would rape and kill them, then dispose of their bodies in an industrial drum.

The family of Peter Bandulj leave Ontario Court in Windsor on Friday, March 4, 2016. Bandulj pleaded guilty to several charges in relation to a kidnapping and rape plot.

Bandulj counselled his accomplice to wear gloves.

“It was more than just idle talk,” Costa said. During the meeting, Bandulj had pointed out the sisters’ house, gotten the materials they’d need for the abduction, then gone home to change into clothing that was black from head to toe so he wouldn’t be spotted breaking into the home at night.

“His acts went beyond mere counselling,” Costa said.

Court heard Bandulj got a diploma in woodworking from St. Clair College after graduating from Century High School. He was working in the tool and die industry at the time of his arrest.

He has no prior criminal record.

Defence lawyer Andrew Bradie could offer no explanation for Bandulj’s crime, but believed he was sincerely sorry.

Bandulj had glowing letters from friends and family, describing him as a kind young man always willing to help a neighbour in need.

Costa replied, saying, “History is full of situations where good deeds have masked horrible, horrible evil.”

Bandulj, a slight man with dark hair and glasses, wiped tears as he addressed the court, reading from two prepared statements. He apologized to everyone in the courtroom, including his mother and father, who listened to the proceedings with the help of a court-appointed Serbian interpreter.

He said he was raised in a good, religious home and that his parents are good people. He hopes no one takes out their anger with him on his family.

The victims and their family did not attend court, but Bandulj had a letter for them, too. “I am deeply sorry,” he said. “You are a really nice family.”

Ontario court Justice Lloyd Dean said Bandulj will be on the national sex offender registry for life and is banned from ever owning or possessing a firearm. For the next decade, he is not to go near a park, school or any other place where children are normally found and he can’t ever work with children or be in a position of trust over someone under the age of 16.

Bandulj must also pay $1,200 in mandatory fines that go into a fund to help victims of crime.

“You expressed a belief and faith in God and I hope you continue with that,” Dean told Bandulj. “Good luck to you.”

Bandulj’s lawyer said the man will get counselling in prison for sex crimes and hopes he will continue to get help after his release.

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Reporter Sarah Sacheli was in court where Peter Bandulj is pleading guilty in connection with a plot to kidnap a 20-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl.