The B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld a lower-court decision to find three people guilty of carrying out a drive-by shooting at home in Mackenzie.
The cases against Kelly Michael Richet, Christopher Ryan Russell, and Miranda Leigh Dingwall were based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence as neither the accused nor the targets of the shooting testified at trial or cooperate with police.
Moreover, the three were arrested about two hours later.
However, a witness reported coming across a pickup truck that matched the description of the one used in the July 2016 incident in flames on a logging road south of the community and shortly before seeing an SUV matching the description of the one in which RCMP found the three while at a gas station in Bear Lake.
RCMP also found a pass for handicapped parking from the pickup in the SUV and glass from a broken light matching that from the SUV at the scene of the fire. The pickup truck was later determined to have been stolen from a Prince George home the day before.
Two members of the three-judge panel agreed with a B.C. Supreme Court justice's finding that, on the totality of the evidence, the three had at least aided and abetted in the shooting.
However, one of the Court of Appeal judges issued a dissenting opinion in regard to Dingwall, noting in part that the judge found she was not present at the scene of the shooting and may not have known it happened.
During the early-morning incident in front of a 200-block Crysdale Drive home, three men were shot at with a .45-calibre semiautomatic handgun and one was hit in the calf, according to evidence presented during a 10-day trial.
In June 2018, Dingwall was sentenced to five years less three years for credit for time served prior to sentencing. A month later, Richet was sentenced to seven years in prison and Russell to six years. Less credit for time served prior to sentencing, Richet had four years and five months left to serve while Russell had three years and 11 months to go at the time.
