An appeal court has upheld the sentence given to a man who crashed a stolen pickup truck into a another vehicle, killing the 18-year-old woman driving that vehicle.
Richard Gamble was sentenced to 13 years in prison last fall in connection with the October 2014 crash in Brantford.
The crash had come after a seven-minute police chase that began outside city limits, when Gamble attempted to avoid a RIDE checkpoint.
The chase came to an abrupt end when Gamble ran a red light and crashed into the vehicle being driven by Ashley Lerno, who suffered serious injuries and died in hospital a few days later.
Gamble appealed his sentence, arguing that the judge shouldn’t have delivered a sentence longer than what either his lawyer or the Crown was seeking without giving each side a chance to address it.
On Thursday, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that while the judge did err, the mistake was “possibly inadvertent” and Gamble’s sentence was “entirely fit, given the circumstances of the offence and the offender.” The appeal was dismissed.
Earlier this year, the two OPP officers who had been pursuing Gamble pleaded guilty to mischief endangering life.
They admitted that they should have called off their chase after it moved into Brantford.
Both officers were given an absolute discharge, meaning neither of them were officially convicted.
