Violent shoplifter earns jail sentence
By Delon Shurtz on May 11, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDdshurtz@lethbridgeherald.com Stealing items from Lethbridge businesses, then reacting violently when caught, has earned a 25-year-old man a jail sentence.Charles Panther Bone was sentenced to four months in jail after he pleaded guilty Friday in Lethbridge provincial court to charges of shoplifting, mischief, possession of stolen property and breaching probation.
Court was told Panther Bone stole a drafting book from a dollar store in 2019, and when an employee followed him outside and began videoing him with a cellphone, Panther Bone grabbed the phone and threw it on the ground, damaging the phone, which was worth between $200 and $400.
On March 8, 2020, Panther Bone had returned to the same store and was approached by a loss prevention officer who suspected the suspect was stealing items. While the employee was on the phone with police, Panther Bone backhanded him with his fist, cutting the loss prevention officer’s lip.
Panther Bone left the store but was arrested shortly afterward a couple of blocks away. Police searched him and found what police believed was fentanyl, as well as flatware and food containers.
“I think he had stolen a spoon and a Tupperware bowl to eat his cereal,” Lethbridge lawyer Tracy Hembroff explained.
She also noted the tests on the suspected fentanyl came back negative.
Crown Prosecutor Clayton Giles said Pantherbone was also caught leaving a grocery store on Sept. 3, 2019 without paying for $50 worth of goods. He then jumped on a bike and rode away.
Hembroff acknowledged the theft, but said the “only items that could be ascertained for certain as being stolen were grapes.”
On March 8 of this year Panther Bone was seen on surveillance video arriving at the former supervised consumption site with a bicycle. The bike had been reported stolen only minutes earlier.
Hembroff told court her client has struggled most of his life, and lost his parents to alcohol-related illnesses. Panther Bone also struggles with substance abuse issues, but hopes to receive help from the Kainai Transition Centre.
Although sentenced to four months in jail, Panther Bone was given credit for the equivalent of four months he has already spent in pre-trial custody, which concludes his sentence. Follow @DShurtzHerald on Twitter 4
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