Canaidian crime involved 'snowmobile belt' and LSD Buttertarts

tay

Hall of Fame Member
May 20, 2012
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A violent drug dealer who hid from police in the basement of his family’s Onoway house for 17 years was finally sent to prison Friday.Since 1995, Benjamin Louis Young had been wanted on a Canada-wide warrant after he abducted and beat a man he believed stole two pounds of marijuana from him. Young beat the man with a snowmobile belt and a phone book, killed his dog and nearly chopped off two of his fingers.


While his co-accused were arrested, Young went into hiding in his own house and never went outside.


“He quite literally lived in the basement of the home for 17 years,” defence lawyer Peter Royal said. He added that Young raised his two children and did daily housework during his self-imposed exile.


“I cannot imagine why, for 17 years, police didn’t visit his home, because they would’ve found him there. It’s unbelievable.”


RCMP officers finally discovered Young when they investigated a marijuana operation at the home in October 2012.

Young was 33 when he went into hiding. He is now 52.


In the prisoner’s box, Young apologized and said he is no longer the same man he was in 1995.


“My first lawyer told me that If I were you, I’d put as much time between these charges as you can and I did that to the best of my ability,” Young told court. “I knew someday I’d have to give my pound of flesh.”


Royal, who was not Young’s lawyer in 1995, said his client wants to live a normal life and run a landscaping business.


On Friday, Young pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm, extortion and killing an animal. He was sentenced to three years in prison. He has already been fined $2,500 for the marijuana operation officers found in 2012.


“We had been looking for him for years,” said RCMP Cpl. Colette Zazulak after the 2012 bust. “We’re just happy that after 17 years, he’s finally behind bars.”


According to agreed facts, Young believed that Shane Letwin had stolen two pounds of marijuana from Young’s drug operation in August 1995. Young was a “mid-level marijuana dealer” and the leader of his accomplices, Royal said.


Young, known on the street as Benny, and his gang abducted Letwin from his Edmonton home and forced him to eat a butter tart laced with LSD as a type of truth serum.


The group took Letwin, then 29, to a Spruce Grove acreage where his bull terrier was boarded. They beat Letwin and Young shot his dog five times with a handgun before he tossed the body into some trees.


“They all just said ‘shoot the dog,’ so Ben did,” Letwin said at the 1998 trial of Young’s co-accused. “He shot him once in the head. He ran around the doghouse and came out and charged the group. At that point Ben shot him four more times.”


Letwin was then taken to an abandoned shed near Calahoo, handcuffed and beaten with a leather sap and a phone book.


“This was several years ago, when we had phone books,” Crown prosecutor Christian Lim told court.


Young and the group moved Letwin again, this time to Young’s home. On the way they bought paper towels to staunch his wounds. “I was told not to bleed on (Young’s) van or it would get worse.”


Once there, Letwin was beaten with a snowmobile belt and held overnight. He was released the next morning near the Royal Alexandra Hospital and warned not to call police.


Weeks later, on Sept. 30, 1995, Young slashed two of Letwin’s fingers to the bone and stole stereo equipment from his apartment as payment of the debt. Young warned him to keep quiet or “he’d shoot him like he did the dog,” Lim told court.


During the attacks, Letwin also suffered a broken cheekbone and nose.


“This was quite a horrific offence,” Lim said.


In 1995, police warned the public that Young was considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached under any circumstances. He was on the RCMP’s most wanted list for years. In 1998, RCMP and Edmonton police put out an unsuccessful public appeal for information on Young’s location.




Drug dealer sentenced after hiding from RCMP in own basement for 17 years
 

damngrumpy

Executive Branch Member
Mar 16, 2005
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kelowna bc
Sounds like the ideal neighbor quiet keeps to himself and violent no he's a different guy
he's just eccentric and oh he doesn't like dogs. good go what kind of person would do
that?