Prison for ‘horrendous’ crimes

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This article was published 29/08/2020 (2230 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The woman a Crown attorney called the “ring leader” of a scheme to beat and rob people in Brandon was sent to jail for eight years on Monday.

Robyn Boersma, 34, faced a swath of serious charges, including robbery, theft, forcible confinement, flight from a peace officer and using a firearm in the commission of an offence, in a crime spree between August and September 2018.

The first incident happened between Aug. 12 and Aug 13, where Boersma led a group of people who tied up, beat, threatened and robbed a man from Carberry, Crown attorney Deidre Badcock said.

Earlier that summer, the man met Boersma through Facebook as the two had mutual friends. They hung out in Brandon, and he took her shopping to buy her things, Badcock said.

On Aug. 12, the man agreed to pick Boersma up in Carberry and then to see a movie in Brandon. Once in Brandon, she asked him to take her to Dairy Queen and then to a friend’s house on Richmond Avenue.

Once at the house, Boersma told him she wanted to a smoke and asked him to go into the basement with her.

He went downstairs with her before multiple masked people came up behind him and forced him onto the ground, Badcock said. They punched him in the face while he could see Boersma sitting on a nearby sofa, directing the others to assault him.

They then blindfolded him and took his car keys, house keys and wallet, which included his ID and credit cards. He was forced onto a chair in the corner of the room and Boersma demanded he tell her his PIN numbers. Badcock said he was threatened that if he didn’t tell them the numbers people waiting outside his parent’s house would “do his parents harm.”

The attackers also held a knife to his throat.

Badcock said he was eventually taken back to his truck, and the group drove him around Brandon while blindfolded to different businesses. After a few stops, the car turned onto the highway and he was taken to Boersma’s residence in Carberry, Badcock said.

The man remained tied up and was placed in a spare bedroom, where he was forced to spend the night.

The following morning, he was brought back to the Brandon house where he was first attacked. He was given his cards and keys back and allowed to leave.

“He was scared as a result of what happened and immediately left the city of Brandon and went back to his hometown,” Badcock said.

His bank record revealed that his debit card was used at the Crystal Hotel and other stores in the city. In the surveillance video from the Crystal Hotel, Boersma is seen standing behind a man in a Detroit Red Wings shirt while he uses the victim’s card to buy more than $100 worth of alcohol. The group also used the card to buy approximately $450 worth of prepaid credit cards and phone cards.

The next incident happened between Aug. 25 and Aug. 26, 2018, when one of Boersma’s co-accused met a man at the Keyrock VLTs in the Keystone Motor Inn. The two struck up a conversation, and the woman invited herself over to the man’s apartment for a drink and to hang out, Badcock said.

Once there, the woman asked the victim if she could use his phone to call some friends to come party. She called Boersma, and the man heard parts of the conversation where Boersma told her not to call from someone else’s phone, Badcock said.

Badcock said the co-accused eventually went to the back door of the apartment building to let in Boersma and two masked men who haven’t been identified yet.

The group stormed into the apartment. One of the men was carrying a gun, and they beat and tied up the victim with a cellphone charger, Badcock said. They threatened him that if he called the police, they would come back and shoot him.

The group took his wallet, including work documents, approximately $750 in cash, his television and food from the fridge.

The man eventually freed himself and ran to a neighbour’s house for help. While waiting for police, he cancelled his debit and credit cards but not before the group spent $30 at A&W.

“Ms. Boersma agrees she was the ringleader behind this incident, she controlled the cash that was robbed,” Badcock said.

The next incident was on Aug. 31, when Brandon police officers were dispatched in the morning to a report of a stolen grey Infiniti.

Fifteen minutes later, an officer saw the vehicle with Boersma driving. He tried to stop it, but the driver wouldn’t pull over. The car turned onto 26th Street, swerving into oncoming traffic to escape police.

Badcock said it eventually turned onto 18th Street, reaching up to 90 kilometres an hour and speeding through a red light at the intersection with Maryland Avenue. Police called off the pursuit because of the “erratic driving.”

A few hours later, at approximately 11:30 a.m., an inmate at the Brandon Correctional Centre called a man to talk about the police chase from earlier in the day. Badcock said the man gave the phone to Boersma during the call, who bragged to the inmate about being in the stolen car and evading police in the chase. She told him she didn’t stop for police because she had two guns, an “Uzi and a pump” on her lap. Badcock said the guns haven’t been found, but she was boasting about allegedly having them.

Police eventually caught up with Boersma on Oct. 8 when she herself was an inmate at the Brandon jail. They arrested her and brought her back to Brandon police headquarters for an interview.

She admitted to police she drove the vehicle and admitted she was the one who led them on a chase.

The final incident happened on Sept. 2, when at 7:15 p.m. a woman called 911 to report she was at a 26th Street apartment and needed help urgently. She told police she was at the home the night before partying with friends and that she was tied up and robbed. Badcock said the residence is where Boersma’s co-accused from the Keyrock VLTs lives.

Shortly before this, Bacock said, police got a call from Boersma’s co-accused from the Keyrock VLTs. She was distraught and called from Shoppers Mall.

When police arrived, she told them she was at home and had also been tied up and assaulted by a group of people there. She got away but was afraid to go back home.

The woman told police one of the men was mad at her for talking to police, so he interrogated her. Ten minutes after the interrogation started, Boersma arrived with a group of other people.

“Robyn Boersma again concedes she was the ringleader of this,” Badcock said.

The woman was told to go downstairs into the basement and sit on a futon. Once there, her hands were tied up and she was interrogated by a group of people, including Boersma. She was hit over the head with a liquor bottle and was left alone. She was eventually able to untie herself and go upstairs.

She then heard Boersma directing two men to take the first woman to the basement before seeing her tied onto a chair.

Police arrived at the co-accused’s house and saw power cords and ropes tied to chairs in the basement. They found blood-soaked towels in the basement and kitchen, Badcock said, and an empty liquor bottle in the garbage.

A man who was arrested in connection with the Sept. 8 incident told police he was one of the people there. He said he remembered one of the co-accused coming upstairs and saying “I bottled that bitch,” and saw the woman come upstairs with blood on her face.

The man also told police he saw someone go downstairs with a bag full of guns that day.

Badcock said rehabilitation has to be secondary to punishment in this case.

The crimes also had a severe impact on the victims. Badcock told the court the first victim was left incredibly shaken and he still lives with the trauma. The second victim is an immigrant and having his work documents stolen meant he couldn’t work for a period of time.

“The facts are horrendous, there’s no ‘ands’, ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ about it,” Badcock said.

“The fact that Ms. Boersma is the mastermind behind this, she is the ringleader and she is the main protagonist here … there’s some degree of planning in each of them, there’s gratuitous violence, there are verbal threats issued, weapons are used.”

Defence lawyer Andrew Synyshyn called the case “a true plea bargain situation.” The Crown and defence agreed on a jointly recommended sentence of eight years in prison for the guilty plea.

“Ms. Boersma’s saga ends here,” Synyshyn said.

“I think it’s important to note that what she’s accepting today, what she plead guilty to today, are her actions and her actions alone. She makes no comment about anybody else involved.”

Judge John Combs said the case points to how far people are willing to go to get their next high when they are involved in drugs.

Combs went along with the recommended sentence, sentencing her to eight years in prison minus time served. Boersma’s conduct was “extremely disturbing” so a strong message needs to be sent to the community, he said.

» dmay@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @DrewMay_