Robert Bell will be home for the holidays after a judge decided Friday that he has done his time for shooting a man, who complained about a noisy New Year's party in the early hours of 2021.
The 30-year-old shot the victim in the foot after he knocked on the front door of an Albert Street West building to ask the party-goers to quiet down.
Bell pleaded guilty to wounding, using a firearm to commit an aggravated assault, pointing a firearm and possessing a shotgun without a licence on Aug. 30.
He was back in a Sault Ste. Marie courtroom to be sentenced for what Superior Court Justice Edward Gareau called "a reckless and senseless act."
Prosecutor Stuart Woods was seeking a five-year sentence.
Defence lawyer Jessica Grbevski argued time served was appropriate for her client, who has been in custody since Jan. 15, 2021.
The judge agreed that the pre-trial custody served by Bell is "a sufficient penalty that meets the ends of justice" and sentenced him to time served.
With the enhanced credit of 1.5 days for each day he has spent behind bars, the sentence is the equivalent of four years, five months and four days.
In August, Gareau heard the victim, who lived nearby, knocked on the door around 5:30 a.m.
Bell, along with another male, came down from the upstairs apartment.
He was carrying a single-barrel shotgun, which he fired, striking the victim in the right foot.
City police obtained video from a security camera inside the upstairs apartment and another located in the stairwell leading up to it.
The footage showed Bell arriving at the apartment at 3:48 a.m.
Four minutes later, he removes what appears to be a single-barrel shotgun from the left sleeve of his parka.
A 5:29 a.m. he exits the apartment, carrying the fiream, and goes downstairs to the porch.
Bell is "out of view for 20 seconds" and the shooting occurred during that time.
The camera then captures him, still carrying the weapon, as he returns upstairs.
The injured victim managed to get to another residence and was taken to Sault Area Hospital.
Multiple fragments of buckshot, but not all of them, were removed from his foot.
Police didn't recover the shotgun.
On Friday, when he imposed sentence, Gareau said Bell has a criminal record, but there are no previous convictions for weapons offences or acts of violence.
A pre-sentence report indicated Bell was exposed to alcohol at an early age.
He went into a downward spiral following the end of a 10-year-relationship and drug abuse became a significant problem — one that is connected to his criminal behaviour.
While incarcerated, Bell has not spent his time “sitting idly, but rather has been productive," taking numerous programs in an effort to rehabilitate himself, the judge noted.
"This bodes well for his chance of success once he is released from custody" and "gives the court confidence that there is a real possibility for rehabilitation."
In addition to Bell's rehabilitation potential, Gareau cited his guilty pleas as a "mitigating factor of some significance."
As for the aggravating factors, the court must take into account that Bell's actions were violent and involved a shotgun that lodged buckshot in the complainant's foot, he said.
Acts of violence, particularly with firearms, call out for deterrence and denunciation.
Bell had a weapon but it was not a prohibited or a restricted firearm, and fired pellets, not bullets, into the complainant's foot, the judge said.
"Although this a reckless and senseless act, these factors temper the kind of sentence that is appropriate."
Gareau also imposed a lifetime weapons prohibition and ordered Bell to provide a DNA sample for the national registry.