Author of the article: The Whig-Standard
Publishing date: Feb 27, 2021 • February 27, 2021 • 8 minute read
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A compilation of offences from Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice for the period of Nov. 16-20, 2020. Only sentences that involved a large fine, probation or incarceration are included.
Nicholas Amaral, 24, was convicted of unlawfully entering the attached garage of an east-side Kingston home in mid-July and the theft of a man’s bicycle. He was given credit for 75 days of pretrial custody, sentenced to time served and probation for one year. Justice Alison J. Wheeler was told that one of the residents of the house was waiting for her son to return over the lunch hour when she noticed Amaral standing outside, putting on a face mask. Soon after her son arrived, Amaral knocked on her door, according to assistant Crown attorney Ryan Makasare, but since she and the boy were the only ones home at the time, he said she didn’t answer. Then the son alerted his mother that the stranger was walking around their home toward their backyard, and moments later, Makasare said, Amaral reappeared, still on foot but pushing a 10-speed mountain bicycle that belonged to the woman’s husband. Seeing Amaral leaving with the bike, Makasare told the judge, the woman left her home to confront him and recovered the two-wheeler. Amaral’s lawyer, Mary Jane Kingston, told the judge her client had a difficult childhood, and in his youth, following his father’s unexpected death from cancer, he began experimenting with alcohol and other substances. He’d just gotten back on his methadone program, she told the judge, when he was arrested in September on these charges. She also told Justice Wheeler that, with no formal Narcotics Anonymous meetings to attend in the jail during the pandemic, her client said some of the other men on his range created their own support group.