The province’s highest court has cut the prison sentence in half for the man accused of shooting up the Vanderhoof RCMP detachment in 2021.
On Tuesday, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Janet Winteringham reduced Paul Nicholas Russell’s sentence from 10 years in prison to five, ruling that the judge who sentenced Russell did not take his mental illness fully into account.
“The appellant’s conduct was dangerous and frightening,” Winteringham wrote in her ruling. “However, there were other factors requiring consideration for this first-time offender.”
Russell was sentenced last year to a total of 10 years in prison for reckless discharge of a firearm, mischief endangering life and fleeing from a police officer after a court ruled he shot several rounds at the police detachment’s windows and empty police cars on Nov. 25, 2021.
There were about a dozen people working inside the RCMP detachment when Russell began shooting on Nov. 25, 2021. Officers inside the detachment testified at trial that they moved civilians into jail cells to keep them safe before pursuing the shooter. Russell was arrested shortly after outside a Kal Tire.
At the time, Justice Francesca Marzari concluded Russell had acted intentionally.
However, his sentencing decision noted that he had a series of mental health breakdowns and psychotic episodes in the weeks and months before the November 2021 shooting, including bouts of heavy drinking.
In sentencing Russell to 10 years in prison, Marzari said that his “unspecified psychiatric disorder” and previous alcohol abuse likely had some contribution to his mental state in November 2021.
“I therefore consider it to be a generally mitigating factor in this case,” the sentencing decision reads. “However, the evidence does not establish the extent or nature of this contribution.”
Russell appealed the sentence this year, claiming the judge misunderstood the connection between his mental illness and the shooting.
Winteringham agreed, finding Marzari had at least four pieces of evidence before her that demonstrated a clear, specific link between Russell’s mental illness and the shooting.
Those included expert evidence from two psychiatrists who assessed Russell, medical records showing Russell taking antipsychotic medication, and a pre-sentence report in which the shooter testified he was not feeling mentally well a week before the shooting.
“Having found that the mental illness evidence was sufficient to constitute a mitigating factor and attenuated the appellant’s moral culpability, the judge placed very little (if any) weight on it,” Winteringham wrote.
“In my view, her failure to do so constituted an error in principle.”
She concluded the trial judge had imposed a 10-year sentence that was “demonstrably unfit” for the offences Russell had committed, leading to a “crushing sentence” for a first-time offender.
Russell has had his prison sentence reduced to four years for reckless discharge of a firearm and four years for mischief endangering life, both of which can be served together, as well as an additional year for fleeing from a police officer.
‘Slap in the face’
Brian Sauvé, the president of the National Police Federation, which represents RCMP officers, has previously said that his members were disappointed Russell had not been convicted of attempted murder after the shooting.
Sauvé said that the appeal means that he would likely qualify for parole within the next two years, and police would be paying attention to see if the shooter would adhere to his parole conditions.
“I think our members are going to sit back and say, bluntly, ‘This is a slap in the face,'” Sauvé told CBC News on Tuesday.
Sauvé said that the shooting proved the need for more mental health-care investments in B.C., as well as wider investments in the wider public safety system — including halfway houses, vocational training institutes and other institutions to ensure people don’t fall back into crime.