The B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court conviction for a man who severely injured a local Crown prosecutor three-and-a-half years ago with a roundhouse punch to the head in front of the Prince George courthouse .
In April 2013, Adrian Real Bergeron was sentenced to a further three years in prison for intimidation of a justice system participant for the September 2011 attack that left Alex Schmeisser unconscious and with injuries that required extensive surgery.
The attack came at the end of a roughly 20-minute rampage that began when Bergeron got into an argument with another client at a downtown homeless shelter on Sixth near Dominion.
When he refused to calm down, Bergeron was told he was going to be taken out of a long-term housing program for which he had been approved the day before and in response, he struck a manager at the shelter and then smashed most of the building's outside windows with a chair.
Bergeron then made his way to the courthouse, throwing a rock through the window of a police van along the way. When he arrived at the courthouse, Bergeron went into the lobby and started swearing at court registry staff "because they worked for the police." He jumped on the rollout gate separating the registry from the lobby and then tried to use the elevator before the sheriffs arrived.
When Bergeron went outside, he saw Schmeisser as he was walking towards the building, punched him and left him lying in the middle of George Street. He was arrested in a vacant lot a short distance away.
A lawyer representing Bergeron in the appeal argued that while the judge hearing the case found his client's underlying purpose was to take out his anger on a justice system participant, the other rational inference is that his rage at the time clouded his foresight.
But in a reasons for judgment issued Monday, Court of Appeal Justice David Tysoe noted Bergeron did not testify to that effect at trial - in fact, Bergeron did not testify at all - and found the trial judge was "entitled to deference with respect to the inference he drew."
B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Austin Cullen reached the verdict following a three-day trial at the Prince George courthouse.
