House arrest for role in cocaine-trafficking ring

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This article was published 14/07/2023 (1190 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man working for a Brandon cocaine trafficking operation will be serving his jail sentence in the community on house arrest.

Austin McDonald pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine for the purpose of trafficking in court on Thursday. He also pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to attend court. The Crown and defence were in agreement for a conditional sentence order for the 24-year-old.

Federal Crown attorney Jasmine Zubbriggen read the following evidence for the charges against McDonald in court.

In May 2022, Brandon Police Service’s organized crime section had been looking into drug trafficking with particular targets of a father and son duo. Officers received confidential information that the two were trafficking out of an apartment in town. Police started surveilling the location and during their efforts, they noticed McDonald come and go and meet with three people on three different occasions. They also observed what they suspected to be three hand-to-hand drug transactions.

Police continued with their investigation and eventually obtained a search warrant for a Brandon home.

During the drug bust, police entered the home to find McDonald and another man sitting at a table, packaging cocaine. The one man tried to run toward the bathroom, but McDonald stayed at the table. There was a three-and-a-half-gram bag that was ripped open, and the two were weighing it out.

McDonald and the man had cellphones beside them as well as spoons, dime baggies and scales used for dividing and packaging the cocaine. Eight grams of cocaine were on the table in total — the amount that McDonald pleaded guilty to possessing — though police found six ounces in the home and $8,000. There were also weapons in the house.

“This was a serious drug trafficking network,” said Zubbriggen, who described the cocaine trafficking as street level and McDonald as filling an employee role in the operation rather than being a boss. “But Mr. McDonald was on the lowest end of it.”

The prosecutor told court that she and McDonald’s defence lawyer, Myles Davis, considered a jail sentence for the man, but ultimately agreed on a community sentence as McDonald was willing to abide by strict conditions. McDonald has no prior criminal record.

Davis told the court that McDonald is from Crane River and that when he was younger, he had witnessed alcohol and drug problems in the community firsthand. He has relatives that were put in the residential school system. Despite that difficult environment, he didn’t amass a criminal record and finished Grade 12, Davis said.

Davis added McDonald had been given a student sponsorship program to attend a media arts program at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon. But McDonald didn’t end up liking the program, and got involved with negative peers, the defence lawyer said. That led to McDonald getting involved in cocaine trafficking.

“The student sponsorship program is still available to him, so going forward he plans to apply to a different program here in Brandon and start schooling again,” Davis said.

Davis said that an exception has been made to McDonald’s house arrest sentence to accommodate schooling if he enrols again.

Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta ultimately endorsed the sentence of two years on house arrest. Though the judge said that McDonald should be credited for his guilty plea, she said she had concerns about the seriousness of the offences.

She said that cocaine is a highly addictive drug which contributes to the downward spiral of many lives in the community. She also said that every day the court is witness to people who are struggling with addictions, and the drug trade contributes to property crime and violence in the community.

“By participating in this subculture and this activity, albeit at the behest or direction of others, that Mr. McDonald is contributing to that presence in the community and to that downward spiral of other people’s lives,” the judge said.

The judge reminded McDonald that even though he will be outside of a correctional facility, he is still serving a jail sentence.

“In almost every case where someone has breached a conditional sentence order that I put them on, I’ve terminated the order, I’ve cancelled it, and they’ve spent the rest of the time sitting in jail,” she warned.

A father and son, Christopher and Miguel Morrisseau, have both been charged with various weapons charges as well as cocaine trafficking charges. Their matters are still before the court.

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

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