A man whose face was left permanently scarred after the tables were turned on him when he and an accomplice tried to rob a jewelry store in Park Extension has been sentenced to a 12-year prison term.
Richardson François, 31, received the sentence Wednesday afternoon during a hearing at the Montreal courthouse. Quebec Court Judge Hélène Morin mentioned the fact that François remains heavily scarred by the nitric acid that was tossed in his face in January 2013 while reading from her judgment. But she did not list it as a mitigating factor when she explained how she reached the 12-year sentence.
The Crown had asked for a 14-year sentence and Morin said she decided on 12 years because François had pleaded guilty to the armed robbery in Park Extension, another robbery committed at a jewelry store in October 2012 and to being part of an assault on a fellow detainee inside the Rivière-des-Prairies Detention Centre after his arrest. The seven people in all who were victims of François’s crimes did not have to testify in court, and relive what they went through, because of the guilty pleas.
Defence lawyer Neil Demmerle-Shantz had recommended a nine-year prison term.
Morin noted that while François claimed the scars he suffered caused him to reflect on his life, this did not stop him from joining several other detainees when they assaulted the man in the jail on March 1, 2014.
During the botched robbery, on Jan. 22, 2013, in Park Extension, François and an accomplice, Jerry Theodore, walked into a jewelry store and pretended to check out items in the store’s display counter. François suddenly pulled a firearm on the store’s owner while Theodore pulled out a sabre. But the situation changed in seconds after the owner somehow disarmed François and three of the owner’s relatives came to his defence.
An all-out brawl broke out and at some point one of the owner’s relatives tossed nitric acid in the faces of François and Theodore. The acid is commonly used by jewellers to test the quality of gold.
François suffered the worst scars from what happened. He lost partial vision in one of his eyes and his scars have significantly altered his appearance.
With time served factored in, François has a little less than seven years left on his sentence.
Theodore, 35, was left with a 63-month prison term when he pleaded guilty to the armed robbery in Park Extension in May 2014. The Parole Board of Canada denied Theodore’s request for day parole in April.
