EDMONTON – Sentencing has been delayed for an Alberta RCMP officer
who admitted he beat a prisoner but said he was stressed out over the
fatal shooting of four Mounties.
Desmond Sandboe pleaded guilty last month to assault but asked for a conditional discharge.
His lawyer told court in Edmonton on Monday that his client was unavailable, but offered no further explanation.
Sandboe’s sentencing was put over to April 13.
He was caught on a cellblock video camera beating a prisoner at the RCMP detachment in Lac La Biche, Alta., in September 2009.
That was more than four years after the Mounties were gunned down near Mayerthorpe, Alta., by James Roszko.
Defence
lawyer Rod Gregory told court during a sentencing hearing last month
that Sandboe suffered from acute stress disorder because he was one of
the officers called out at the time of the shootings.
Gregory
suggested the beating was not premeditated and Sandboe incorrectly
thought his victim, Andrew Clyburn, 33, might attack him.
The Crown argued a discharge wouldn’t be appropriate, because it was “a sustained beating over the course of 40 seconds.”
Clyburn had been taken to police cells after becoming unruly during a bar fight in which he was injured.
Sandboe has been suspended without pay.
