A Vancouver man who skipped out on a cab fare in Burnaby and then punched the taxi driver in the head when he pressed him to pay was re-arrested this weekend after allegedly violating his court ordered curfew.
Courtney Leslie Grey, 54, pleaded guilty on March 6 to one count of assault causing bodily harm.
The charge is connected to an incident on March 23, 2022.
Grey was given a four-month conditional sentence – including a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew – and a year of probation.
On Saturday, however, police stopped him for jaywalking in North Vancouver near Lonsdale Avenue and First Street at 7:45 p.m. – past his curfew and some distance from his home in the Downtown Eastside.
He was arrested when police discovered he was bound by a conditional sentence order and appeared to be violating it.
At a bail hearing in Vancouver provincial court Wednesday, Crown prosecutor Kathleen Lafontaine raised concerns Grey may have violated a no-drugs-or-alcohol condition as well, since police described him as having appeared “high,” tense, sweating and paranoid.
Lafontaine said Grey should be kept in custody or released under a “very strict plan.”
“It’s concerning he’s in North Vancouver for an unknown reason, past his curfew, potentially under the influence of something.”
Defence lawyer Olivia Whynot said Grey should be released under the existing conditions but with an additional weekly reporting requirement.
She said Grey had told her he had gone to North Vancouver with a friend but his friend had left him there.
He had intended to travel back on a SeaBus, which stops close to his house, she said.
Grey said the condition officers had found him in on Saturday was the result of a mental health state, according to Whynot.
B.C. provincial court Judge Ellen Gordon agreed to Whynot’s proposed plan.
Grey was released on the existing conditions, with the added requirements that he report to a conditional sentence supervisor once a week and attend all appointments made for him with the forensic psychiatric outpatient unit.
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