Man gets two full years in jail for string of rural crimes

By Peggy Revell on May 31, 2018.

A two-year sentence was handed down Wednesday to a man arrested in connection to rural break and enters, vehicle thefts and evading police dangerously multiple times, leading to a rollover in a highway ditch.

While the Crown requested a three-year sentence for Randy Yaholnitksy, Judge Ted Fisher reduced this to two years taking into consideration the early guilty pleas and assessment of the accused’s brain injury.

No pretrial credit was given.

“These are very serious charges,” Fisher said of the risk Yaholnitsky put himself, police and citizens in by his actions —and reiterating the Crown’s point during sentencing arguments that the accused fled from police in a stolen vehicle in the same location, and under similar circumstances, to another incident where a young woman was killed last September.

Defence counsel Sara Lewans told the court “life turned upside down” following a brain injury her client suffered from last year, which still causes him PTSD and affected his judgment in fleeing from police and moral blameworthiness.

The early guilty plea also saves the court from multiple trials, she said.

“He wants to turn his life around,” she said, and while in jail hopes to get assistance for his injury and drug addiction.

Yaholnitsky pled guilty to possession of stolen property over $5,000 after his fingerprints and a palm impression were found on the inside of a driver’s window of a truck and cargo trailer that was stolen from a rural property, evaded police, then abandoned.

He also pled guilty in connection to a Feb. 16 break and enter at two neighbouring businesses on Range Road 64 in Cypress County, where a Dodge Ram flat-deck truck and numerous items were stolen. According to the agreed statement of facts, police later located the stolen vehicle turning onto Broadway Avenue at Box Springs Road, with the accused driving. He fled, they located him later, and he fled again.

Police observed the truck again at 1 p.m., and he once again refused to pull over — instead driving into the oncoming traffic lane, increasing his speed while approaching Crescent Heights High School. Police once again opted to not pursue due to safety, but observed the accused drive through the school zone at a high rate of speed, continuing in the lane for oncoming traffic, and driving erratically for approximately 14 blocks.

On Feb. 27, Redcliff RCMP received a report from Brooks RCMP to be on the look out for a person driving a stolen GMC Sierra who had broken into an oil site outside Tilley, fled and nearly missed an officer’s vehicle while escaping.

Redcliff RCMP located the vehicle and unsuccessfully attempted to pull it over, losing sight of it. They then came upon the truck upside down in the centre meridian ditch, significantly damaged.

Police and EMS were able to extricate Yaholnitsky, who was breathing and moving. Inside the truck were multiple items that had been reported stolen.

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